Challenges

I have learned that I like challenges. I get inspired by a success story or have a “light bulb” moment and decide to begin pursuing some new goal. I usually write down the target, make a list of the steps or benchmarks that lead up to the target, and then off I go. Day one. Excited. Motivated. Focused. This is a great day. I’ve found, however, that inevitably day two comes. Hmm. Herein lies the problem. I have therefore also learned that I have a tendency to not see challenges through to the target. I wonder if anyone can relate to this? I am assuming so since just about everyone has “lose 20 pounds” as their New Year’s Resolution…every year.

(This realization has brought me to a new challenge idea: maybe I should see how long i can go without giving up on challenge?)

I would like to make a list of goals that I really want to achieve (I completely admit that some of these are quite random and that some may make you ask, “is that really a goal of yours?” ) 

• Read the Bible in a year

• Lose around 40 pounds

• Learn to make meals that are healthy, delicious, easy, and cheap (you usually have to pick two)

• I’d like to see if I can achieve the above by only using items on the Publix buy-one-get-one and sale list

• Play The Sims for only 15 minutes

• Make a collection of dummy wedding cakes and create a portfolio of them

• Plant a garden with veggies, herbs, and fruit trees/bushes

• Keep the house clean for one whole week – 7 days, every room

• Commit to and stick with picking a certain day every week to do certain house chores, i.e. every Tuesday, clean the bathroom, every Thursday clean the floors, etc. Perhaps this would keep down the big overwhelming cleaning day that after a while becomes inevitable once you can’t see the TV over the stuff on the coffee table

• Vacation in Europe

• Cheer up a basset hound

• Try every recipe in my smallish/medium-sized cookbook collection

• Find out how long we can go using only the food we currently have without buying any new groceries (with the exception of milk, bread, and eggs – or maybe not!)

• Volunteer at a soup kitchen

• Go camping, again – I’d really like to get my money out of all that camping equipment we bought so enthusiastically last fall and used once

• Eat only one potato chip

• Tour Israel

• Watch an infomercial and at no point think to myself “that’s cool, I could use that” (I do not need a combination hair brush/plant stand, even though it comes with a second one for free as well as a set of steak knives)

• Leave no room for Jello