New Year's resolutions

I never thought about New Year resolutions except when I was a kid and at the time, I was maximizing the amount of New Year’s gifts not aiming to try new things and stretch myself. The type of promise I was offering was to be good in school and nice with my family and that was usually enough to get the job done. Good news is that we didn’t have to give the gifts back if we didn’t fulfill the promise. I think there is one reason beyond the fact that, at the time, I could not keep one Franc in my pocket more than ten minutes and I was broke all the time and the reason is that in Europe, the true End of Year is anywhere between June 30st and July 31st, between when school stops and when the majority of the people goes into vacation. The beginning of the next year is really September 1st when the last people go back to work. That is when resolutions are being shaped and carried forward into the next year. Christmas Vacation and New Year Celebration are four month into the year and it may be a time to pause and readjust but not a time to come up with a complete new set of resolutions. Living in the United States, things are very different. Thanksgiving is the actual end of the year when we celebrate what happened last year and the New Year is effective January 1st when we celebrate what’s to come. Even New Year’s Eve is not called end of year but the Eve of the new one.

So this year and for the first time, I have decided to come up with a set of resolutions and here they are: the first one is that I am going to run a half marathon between May and June. To tell you the truth, this is the most challenging goal as I have not been the type of guy who challenges himself just to learn something about him. It may have been a big mistake but I always found that there was plenty of good learning in my everyday life when I was stretching myself in every possible way that I didn’t find any benefits in running or climbing a mountain (for more on the benefits of running: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ans/psychology/health_psychology/running.html) . The second one is that I am going to take control of my diet and make sure that I am getting the right amount of calories as well as other ingredients on a weekly basis. I have been injured last year with the groin and I gain 20 pounds as results. It feels that the reason is that I don’t really know what I am eating and because of that I can’t pace myself from one meal to the other. And the third one is one is that I am moving completely paperless by the end of the year. Here this is my contribution to the environment. After all, we don’t have to cut any trees when we don’t need to. I will also try to understand what the true benefits are and whether the economy I am making on paper are not wasted on more electricity consumption. Of course, I am going to use this blog as a way to keep track of my progress on all fronts.