January 1st: Being Proud & Looking Ahead

 It's January 1st, the beginning of a new year. This supposedly means a new year, new me, new outlook on life. Though I'm not that type of person, so it is more like: New year, same me, adjusting my outlook on life. 

If you had talked to me last week you'd have heard a little bit about how I wanted to start the year off with a clean apartment. This is definitely not my strong suit (ugh who likes to clean, certainly not me), and when given the option, would prefer to convince mom, dad or either sister to come down and "help" me clean while they do all the work and I poke around pretending I'm doing something useful. However, that was not a possibility this time, so I started small. Start some laundry, wash the dishes, tidy the kitchen and clean up my office space, wait no actually I want to rearrange a section of my apartment. Next day tackle some more of the rearranging, more dishes (never ending!), and of course more laundry. Following day clean out my bedroom and **gasp** vacuum the carpet, continue on to the bathroom. Now we are at Monday, January 1st and I still had to put all my notebooks and books back onto bookcases, wash the kitchen floor. It's the end of the day and I've still got a mountain of things on my 'to do list' but they are going to have to be done in small doses in the coming days.

Firstly, for this year my goal is to joy in the little wins. If anyone had told me, I could physically manage all that cleaning even a week ago I would have laughed and scoffed because most days I barely feel like I can make it to my desk to hold my body up to work (thanks hEDS and all the fun side effects). So today although my weekend accomplishment list was not completed (only 1 thing missed and that's not due until August), and my upcoming to do list looks a mile long I'm going to choose to be proud. I got more cleaning done that I normally do in a 9-month period on my own in 6 days working 10+ hour days for 3 of them. 

My hopes for the coming days, weeks, months
1) Work on the remaining to do list, feel accomplished and proud of completing tasks and less down for not accomplishing everything ASAP.
2) Get back to journaling. Whether it's in my therapy notebook, poetry notebook or doodle sketchbook, I'd like to get back to self-expression of my emotions. 
3) Weekly blog post. I think a weekly recap even on the most boring weeks would create a nice tracking of my year and accomplishments. 
4) 31 miles in 31 days. Signed up for a challenge of 31 miles in 31 days. I'm thinking I might upgrade the challenge to 365 miles in 365 days, but for now going to focus on just the month of January.
5) Becoming a better employee, determine what I need to do to get a promotion and how to go about proving I can handle more responsibility. 
6) Got a few side projects professionally I'd like to implement. 
7) Got plenty of side projects personally I'd like to successfully complete, or at minimum begin this year. 
8) Organize my files. I've got thousands of project files, photos, personal records and documents that I'd really like to organize into usable formats. 

Seems like I've got a lot planned and for a big year ahead. Especially since the above doesn't include hopefully traveling some (I'd love to go back to Ireland/Europe as a long shot, but I'd gladly take trips in the US); going through, organizing and possibly paring down my belongings; finding a new apartment and moving; experimenting with more gluten free baking recipes; and finding better medical professionals to assist me (though that might me moving away from the 5 practices I like), although it might be needed for more comprehensive medical care. 

Here is to a new year, the same old me and hopefully a better outlook on life/year ahead.