...and so begins the Year of Responsibility

So, this post is where I lay out the Year of Responsibility, which I feel like couldn't have arrived at a better time. First, however, I would like to follow up with one important lesson from the Year of Discipline that I left out of my last post. I think I am going to write a lot tonight.

Possibly the most important thing that I learned last year was how important it is to love myself. I have always really struggled with it, and this year I finally learned to love myself. This is important, because I realized that if I don't love me, how can anyone else possibly love me? I am sure I could write a lot about this, but I will just point out one offshoot of this idea, and leave the rest for everyone else to figure out on their own.

The one thing that I will point out is how this concept seeps its way into even small things in life. For example, eating a slice of pizza will taste good. In the short term, it will satisfy some carnal pleasure, and maybe bring me a moment of happiness. However, slice by slice, that pizza will make me feel worse about myself in the long run. Each time I eat a piece, i will be a little bit disappointed in myself, because I won't be the healthy, disciplined person that I want to be. Each time, I will be someone that is less of what I love about myself. I am not saying that I should NEVER eat pizza, nobody loves a boring anal hardass either. All I'm saying, is that little things which you might not realize affect your self-image do affect it, and that in the long run these things will add up to have a big impact on your happiness and fulfillment.

Ok, on to the Year of Responsibility. I may follow up another time with some big picture motivations for why I want to do these things this year, but for now, here are some specific goals that I have for myself this year:

- Do at least one community service project a month. (I am hopefully kicking this off tomorrow by volunteering at the food bank with my Mom's boyfriend)

- Celebrate Shabbat on Friday night at least once a month, by either having shabbat dinner and lighting the candles and staying in, or going to services, or both.

- Donate a minimum of 5% of my income to charity, with a goal of 10%.

- Manage my finances better. This will involve tracking all of my transactions in financial software such as Quicken, and possibly setting a budget too.

- Really sit down and do a GTD-style weekly review. This may start out as once a month and build up to weekly.

- Write in this blog at least once a month (I am going to start out right after this with another post tonight).

- Each month, write to one person that I care about but haven't kept in touch with when I meant to.

- Put my dirty dishes in the dishwasher, instead of the sink.

- In general, make less of a mess to begin with instead of making a big mess, cleaning it up, and making another big mess.

Finally, a couple of holdovers from the year of discipline:
- Take my vitamins every day.
- Floss every day.

Ok, I may develop more as I go along, but I think this is a pretty good list for now. It may seem like a lot of resolutions, but I really think I can fit all of these in, and that I will feel really good about them when I do them.