the trick is to keep breathing

So over my brief microsabbatical I decided on a list of things I want to get done by the end of the year: thus, New Year's Resolutions, in reverse, ie my resolution is to have this done before the new year. See? Get it? It's like I'm clever instead of backwards and wrong!

1. Get Healthy [metric: exercise 3+/wk; lose 10+ lb]
   Content note / Note this: being healthy and losing weight are not always the same thing! Health has a unique meaning to every individual body!
   That being said: for me getting healthy and knocking off weight go hand-in-hand at this point in time. From May-September I ate poorly, rested poorly, drank too much, drowned in stress, and had no time or motivation to work out at all. That plus medication changes has resulted in what is, for my body, unhealthy poundage.
   I miss swimming. I miss yoga. I don't miss running, fuck running, but I miss being able to run I guess? I miss punching my bag. I want to have Korra arms. And I have, quite reasonably, 10-20 lb I could lose before being even close to "danger". (Trust me, I'm a Taurus; we don't diet.)
   This is something I can make happen by 01 Jan 2016.

2. Inhabitable basement [metric: obvious]
   Right now the basement is storage, which is part of what basements are for, but mine opens up to my patio (and grill, and fire chimney) and has a nice little area by the windows where friends could sit and drink wine and grill things. I've two drum sets in my basement and my keyboard, all of which I have been missing desperately. (I miss music! I dream about pianos.) My workout area is functional, but not at all welcoming. My laundry area could use some sprucing.
   Much of the storage is related to the above, which means I just need to sort it and work through it. A good part, however, is my grandmother's stuff. She finally passed away in August (I am not sure I even mentioned it here; I was too broken by it to do so) and I do not mind storing her things forever but need to go through them and decide which way makes sense.
   This is, also, quite doable by 2016, and having those areas back in my life will please me immensely.

3. Shame room --> Craft room [metric: obvious]
   I want to turn my spare bedroom into a crafting room, to house sewing / knitting / beading / anything else I may start doing. Right now it's a shameful repository of clothes-to-be-donated and a few boxes from moving (not original boxes - these were empty boxes that were repacked with "shit i do not want to deal with rn" and hidden).

4. Plan for the greatroom [metric: having an estimate / loan]
   I have plans in my head to redo my entire greatroom, which started with my neverending desire to replace the horribly stained carpet in there and grew into a really, really epic floor plan. I need to get it from my head onto the page, then find a contractor who can give me estimates on time / cost to make it happen. Why not? Houses are investments, and my cafe-bar thing will be incredible.

5. Work-Life Balance [metric: ???]
   I need to prove to myself that I can, in fact, work the kind of job that pushes all of my success buttons without killing myself. The next 3 months will be busy, as always, but not deadly, so it's time to fucking do it. I still don't know how to make a metric for this; maybe I can use success on the other Resolution points, because they won't happen if I continue to use my energy on work.

6. Mental Peace [metric: ???]
   I went back through some journal entries and I've been in a massive depression funk since early 2014. That's too long. It has started to severely affect my health and my job. I need to attack this. I realize depressions don't "go away" but I haven't tried anything really and I at least deserve an effort.

7. Write Again [metric: get some word count] No real comments. I just miss writing.

I stopped there, since there are really only 3 months left in the year, and they will contain not only the major hols of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but also the birth of my newest niece or nephew, so I'm well aware that this is a lot to do in that time frame. (Obviously they won't need to be complete, but I work better with deadlines, even self-imposed ones. Better to not let myself cheat.)

There. Public posting makes it real, right?

• Had a pretty good weekend full of friends, fireworks, and drunkenness. Got chased by the cops (yes, we are all 30 years old), did some amazing karaoke with safety_caesars as Edgar and Locke, watched Lithium play an awesome show, and sewed. A lot.


• Finished my Azula costume for our Avatar group at Otakon 2011. The costume's functionally finished - I need to give it a good smoothing over (tightening hems, adding fancier trim, some flashy buttons for fun, etc) but at the moment I could wear it and be okay with it. A good afternoon's attention to the details will make it very awesome. Still to do:
  
  • Wig
  • Bitty Collar (the piece right around her neck; I've done the two more floppy collars already)
  • Ribbon / trim for the boots (I have boots)
  • Fancier gold trim or buttons for the bigger collars; gold trim or fabric paint for the symbols on her ~loincloth~
  • General Smoothing and Touch-Ups


• Made decent headway on my Porom costume (again for Otakon 2011). I have most of the materials in hand; it's mostly just a matter of construction, as it's one of those great costumes which a) defies real-world physics and b) isn't even canonically consistent if you compare the art to the FMV to the sprite. Go Squeenix. You jerks. This costume is going to be really, really hard to pee in.


• Started Dragon Age as a distraction. It is a successful one.


• Realized there are only 12 weeks until the Akron Marathon Relay! At which I would like to be A LOT FASTER >.> So, I have constructed a training plan with the help of SmartCoach on RunnersWorld.com. The plan is pretty interesting!~ It looks very in-depth, telling me pacings for my intervals and tempos and stuff like that, and even though I still hate running I'm kind of excited to try it and see if it works. For $15 I can get a month of access to the "Master Training Plan" on their website, and I am thinking about doing that too, because $15 isn't that much for a month and I could just print it all out at the end of the month. I have really been lazy about running recently, although part of it has been letting this awful tendonitis thing heal itself, so I can't take all of the blame entirely.


• Mostly: yup awesome