Happy Half Year!

I'm a big believer in new year's resolutions. Okay, that's a total lie. I, like most humans, make resolutions at the start of every year but have very rarely, if ever, kept them. This year, however, I actively decided to take my resolution-making seriously. Why this year, you ask? Well, I have been reading "The Happiness Project" -- a book that every single person should read (think "Eat, Pray, Love" but for real people) -- and it's all about how the author set different goals for herself each month on her journey to happiness. So, being inspired by said book, I decided to make a BUNCH of resolutions for the year.

I split them up into categories (I'm a planner, and thereby a list maker so of course I split them up into categories), some timely resolutions for the short term, specific tasks I want(ed) to achieve, and some year-long resolutions for general goals for the year, philosophies to live by, etc. Sidebar: I have found that people respond better to specifics: specific questions, specific tasks, i.e. "Go to the store and get me some shredded sharp cheddar cheese" opposed to "Go get me some cheese." So, with that in mind, I created a list of resolutions that varied from the very specific to the not specific at all and set about 2012 with the goal of achieving all 26 items on the list. (Yes, 26.)

...

Fast forward and now it's July. Whooooo hoooo. Looking at my list of resolutions now (which I am literally doing because I taped it up on my wall by my desk), I could probably cross off about five of them, which, while something to be celebrated, leaves a lot to be done. Now that we're midway through the year, I figure now is a great time to evaluate my resolutions, pat myself on the back for the ones that I've achieved, all while making some new ones for the rest of the year. So, without further ado, here are my half-year resolutions, with some of my new year resolutions from January sprinkled in. :)

1. Create a personal budget.
• I've always been fairly good with money, but now that adulthood has suddenly crept up on me and I have real adult bills and expenses, it's probably a good time to get really good with money and create a legitimate budget for myself, and find ways to spend my money wisely.  That's not to say I don't have a budget that I live by, but I live in New Jersey which means that I spend every waking moment I can at a mall. (And no, I'm sadly not exaggerating.)
2. Get healthy.
• Isn't this on everyone's list in some form or another? For me, this means going to the doctor and just taking better care of myself. If you read my post about the drama of my contacts, you'll find that I only went to the eye doctor after my sister MADE the appointment for me. Even my failing vision - something I need to survive - couldn't force me to make my own appointment. Do I have a fear of doctors or needles and all that crap? Not in the slightest. I just get caught up in the day-to-day madness of life, and before you know it, it's July and you haven't been to a doctor in... years.
3. Read more.
• To my credit, I have a read a lot this year, but there's always something more to read. Someone once told me the more you read, the better writer you become, and as I venture into taking this blog more seriously, I could probably afford to be a better writer, which leads me to...
4. Blog more!
• I created this thing for a whole slew of reasons which still hold true, so I want to take it more "seriously" (because this blog is just oh-soooo serious) and write in it more.
5. Learn more.
• It's funny that when you're a kid, your sole job in life is to go to school and learn and it's the absolute last thing you want to do, but as an adult you pay crazy amounts of money to spend your FREE TIME learning... While graduate school isn't something on my immediate horizon, I would like to take some classes or take part in fun events that I could learn from. Plus, great sites LivingSocial and Groupon tend to offer majorly discounted tickets to classes/fun events, so to me, this is a way to "spend my money wisely." Classes that could include...
• A NOOK class: I have had my NOOK for more than a year, and while it's tons o fun and I have a good handle on it (except for that one time I dropped it and cracked the frame), it wouldn't hurt to take a quick class in how to actually use it so that I can use it to its full potential.
• A photography class: I'm a big picture taker (and scrapbooker with said photos) and as great as my photography skills are now, there's always room for improvement.
• A cooking class: I, like, don't know to cook. At all. If it involves a microwave or a coffee pot: I'm your gal. But even then, I set the microwave on fire last year and I broke our Keurig coffee pot earlier this year so there's that. (How you break a Keurig is beyond me, but if you need one broken: I'm your gal.) But, as I can't survive on frozen food for the rest of my life and I will eventually have to cook for myself as an adult, there's no time like the present to learn how to boil some water and get cooking.
6. Actually do the things - i.e. take the classes you sign up for - you pay for.
• It's all fine and great that I want to take all these classes and learn more and everything, and it's even better when, as noted earlier, things like LivingSocial and Groupon have cheapo offers to classes that match my interests, but it's NOT good when I buy those things, and then let them sit around and collect dust, and don't actually use them. I've actually had two of those damn things expire on me. And, yes, while they're inexpensive, that's money that's NOT being well spent.
• Case in point: In April, I bought an offer for an unlimited month of hot yoga. The offer expires tomorrow. I'm going to my first class tonight.
7. Travel.
• I feel like this one is on everyone's list, and it's never been a huge deal to me to travel, but one of my goals as a kid was to go to all 50 states. As I'm growing up and have control over my time and money, I figure now is the time to jump on the traveling train (pun totally intended) and see the world.
• I've already partially accomplished this for this year, as my friends and I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, LA in February (I. Know.) and I just came back from a fun trip to the Outerbanks in North Carolina. While I don't have any other set travel plans for the rest of the year, who knows what will come up and it's always good to have something to work toward. (For the record, I've been to 14 of the 50 states. Not too shabby...)
8. Start to develop a 5 year plan.
• You'd think as a planner that I'd already have this one down... but no. This is actually my least favorite one. While I like to think I have control over the present, and I always say "you're the master of your own fate," creating a 5 year plan has always made me nervous because no one really has control over the future. But now that I'm getting older, finding my legs in  my career, and getting myself set up financially (hello, personal budget!) I feel like I can actually tackle this, even if it just turns out to be a series of ideas instead of specific plans.

Looking at this list, I'm finding that it's a complete contradiction to my "people respond better to specifics" theory, but I actually think that these are things that I could achieve by year's end, so here's to it! Happy half-year!