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So, we’re just about ready to celebrate the beginning of a new year. What do people usually do around this time? They make a bunch of new year resolutions. What usually becomes of them? Absolutely nothing.  They forget about them within a month. In fact, one study shows that a mere 8% of people actually follow up on their resolutions. This may partly be because they may have made too big or too many goals, but also partly because, face it, people are lazy and need accountability to accomplish things much of the time. I know I’ve made new year resolutions almost every year and never actually kept any of them. This got me thinking, what are some things that can be done to better the chances of following up on your new year resolutions? Well, I’ve compiled a step-by-step list.

1. Make a list (but keep it short)

Simply jotting a list of your new year resolutions and placing them in a place where you’ll see them everyday will increase your chances of taking steps towards accomplishing them. This is what I do when I want to get anything done. School, personal or daily goals, whatever… if I don’t write down my goals I rarely accomplish them. Whether it be because I have a terrible memory or simply because I lack the dedication to accomplish things without constant reminders, I need to write everything down.

2. Organize: Dissect your goals into a series of steps you can take toward achieving them

This also is something I have to do to get anything done. I have a hard time simply looking at the big picture and working towards it… I need to compile a series of small(ish) steps I can take towards achieving it. Let’s use working out as an example, specifically weight gaining. Someone may set a goal to gain a certain amount of muscle in a certain amount of time, but without setting aside certain days you’re going to work out, most likely, little will actually come from it. This may be obvious for something like working out, but what about a goal to start eating healthier or to learn a musical instrument? For eating healthier, you could possibly make a goal to cut out one unhealthy food you eat on a regular basis every couple weeks. If you do this for long enough, you’ll eventually transition into a diet almost completely free of unhealthy foods. With a learning a musical instrument, you could make a goal to practice fifteen minutes a day every other day at first. Once you find yourself habitually following that pattern, you could increase it to fifteen minutes every day, then thirty, and you can go as high as you want (or can handle).

3. Keep a Journal

Whether it be a physical notebook or a word document (I use Google Documents), keeping a daily or weekly journal where you jot down any progress you made towards your goals helps tremendously if you can force yourself to stick with it. Without doing this I would have never lost the weight that I did and I’d most likely never do much of my homework (again, I’m very forgetful). I’d like to start using a journal to keep track of my progress on various other goals I have right now seeing how I’ve made progress with past goals using one. I usually combine this with the other steps and actually make a checklist of the specific steps I want to make towards my goals every day.

So yesterday I randomly decided I was going to try and start writing down my dreams so I could remember some of them.   I rarely remember any of my dreams after I’ve been awake for five minutes or so, so this should beinteresting.   Here are accounts of the two dreams I remembered last night. The first, I don’t remember that well and didn’t write a detailed account of it.   I was awake for a few minutes between the first and second dream; that’s how I had a chance to write down both.   I don’t think I’d remember more than one dream at all if I didn’t wake up a few times throughout the night so I had a chance to write them down.  The second, I remember a little better but not fully.   I know there was another I had and  woke up after, but didn’t feel like writing down for some reason and now I don’t remember it at all.   I’m sure there may have been even more that I never remembered after awaking at all.

1. What I wrote down was “slipped/van/ice.”  I remember it being right on my own road.
2. Here’s what I remember: I was going to be late for school and somehow knew that my family had plans to take my somewhere with a bus filled with a few members of my family in it after school.  As I was walking into school late, I saw my aunt (where you first enter the school) and almost said hi, but did not because I was going to be late for class.  I had some kind of video tape that someone gave me and he told me that he’d hold onto it during class because the teacher would be madder if he caught me with it.  At first I refused, but shortly after I gave it to him anyway.  While in class, I realized that there was invisible water in the classroom covering half my body.   There was no actual wetness, but I could push the water around and such.  One girl in the class made a  curious remark of the surprising fact that there was water in the class.   I splashed some of the non-wet water and all of a sudden there were drops of water covering the desks.  I don’t remember any details about what the last two words I wrote had to do with anything, but here they are: trouble | laughing.  I remember the teacher being annoyed, but I only vaguely remember laughing.  I’m pretty sure I laughed and got in trouble sometime after I splashed the water, though.

So there you go.   Enjoy reading about my meaningless dreams.   Meaningful and well though out post on a subject that’s actually interesting to come sometime in the future.

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Hold mundo!   I hope I’m correct in saying that’s Spanish for “Hello World,” but I can’t be certain (Spanish isn’t exactly my best subject).   Anyway, this is my boring, introductory blog post.    I honestly have no idea what I’m going to write, but I’m fairly certain I’ll think of something as I go along.

I’ll start by saying that I spend way too much time on the computer and have been threatening to create some kind of a successful website for years now.    I’ve created a few decent sites that have begun to grow that I later abandoned for various reasons.   It’s very common for me to only half finish things.

I’m making this blog because lately I’ve had this urge to start writing, but didn’t know where to start.   I wanted to make a niche website, but couldn’t think of which niche I’d want to peruse.   I then decided I wanted to create a general blog, a place where I can write about whatever the heck I want.  I have a few ideas for some articles right now that I really want to force myself to write, but we’ll see how that goes.    I don’t really believe this blog will ever turn into anything big (or anything more than maybe ten people will read, for that matter) but I think it will help improve my writing, which is partly my goal.  I’ll probably be cross-posting many of the articles I write on other sites so that they can actually get some views.

Well, if anyone has read this far, I hope I haven’t bored you.   I’m going to stop writing now. /end boring introductory blog post

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