It is normal for this time of year to make resolutions for the new year, I have made resolutions various times over the years and I’ve never really been that successful in keeping them. So this year I decided that I would take a slightly different track, I am to set some general goals and then some smaller actions that I can do to meet those goals. I’m not going to as far as full SMART methodology, but I would like to have thing more focused than just a simple goal that is vague and more than likely won’t be achieved.
Lose weight
This is almost a perennial on my list, every year I have but this down on the list and every year I have finished the year not a lot different from the start.
I’m however a little more determined this year than I have been of late. So how can I achieve this, here are some simple steps I want to make this year.
Diet
Now I’m not one for fad diets, I’ve tried them in the past and they don’t work well for me, something that I have tried and found works OK for me is to have 2 days a week when I have a restricted calorie intake. I want to continue this and also be a little more careful of the portion sizes, as I’m normally cooking for two it’s difficult as a lot of recipes are for 4 servings and just simply halving the recipe doesn’t always work out with workable quantities. So what I have been doing is when I make something for example a shepherds pie then I will make 2, one to eat then and freeze the other part for later.
Exercise
I have already started to get more exercise than I did a couple of years ago, because with going into the office most days, this enables me to park at the other end of town and walk 20 minutes to the office and back again at night. I want to add a little bit to this with some gentle core exercises once or twice a week, and hopefully introduce doing some sit ups once a week.
Language and Voice
The key things that has come out of my more recent activism and other activities is two fold, the first is that my Spanish is atrocious. I’m OK on a day to day basis but under pressure I tend to mumble and struggle to grasp for words, So I need to be a little bit more confident with the language and extend my vocabulary, I should really get back to using DuoLingo each day so that the Spanish comes easier to recall.
The next thing is my voice, when I transitioned I didn’t have any formal voice training and while again I’m OK on a day to day basis but recently I had a conference call where I had a substantial echo and it was very disconcerting, and again with doing more public speaking I’d like the experience to be a little less dysphoric. I’m going to be using “The voice book for Trans and Non-Binary people” to try and train my voice a bit better.
Thats most of the stuff that I would like to change personally on a day to day basis, there are some other things that I would like to achieve this year, but more specific things.
The Book
Having written the book last year the big thing is to get it edited into something that I feel ready to publish, I have only let one person read it so far. I deliberately left it to one side after I finished the draft so that I could come back to it again with fresh eyes in January. I’m also still hunting around for a publisher, I got one rejection so far and that was on commercial grounds as they already have a number of similar titles, but they did give me a list of other places to try. I’m still awaiting to hear from one, and a number of options are still open at this point.
Other Projects
I’m still looking at what else I can do, I’ve definitely been bitten by the writing bug and I don’t think the current book will be my last, in the meantime while I search for inspiration I hope to keep writing things for this blog and who knows maybe some other things for elsewhere.
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