I love making really creative, convoluted resolutions that combine multiple goals in a sort of back-door way. One of my most successful resolutions of years past -- successful in the sense that I'm still happily incorporating them in my regular life -- combined my goal of wanting to get back into shape and also spend more time with friends: the resolution was, "Run gregariously". Likewise, our family's "Special Dinner" series was my answer to finding ways to build traditions among a group of people who come from many backgrounds but who now lived together in one home. They're fun; they're funky; and they worked.
So here, below, are three of my favorite twisted "resolutions" for 2016, along with a description of how & why I came up with these particular ideas.
1.
What I really want to do (that is, the goal behind the resolution) is build up my upper-body strength: lift weights more often, do pushups, yadda yadda. In the past, there have been times when I just *loved* lifting -- bur recently, as much as I love the idea of it, I somehow just never seem to get started. So putting on my thinking cap about what was different then than now, it was that the love-lifting-times came when I had a natural clothing transition time that coincided with a lifting space -- for example, I was going from class to swimming, so I happened to be right near the weight machines right as I was changing from normal clothes into other clothes. In that situation, a small detour to the weight machine just seemed like a gift to my body and my mood. What worked was a combination: the swim was a signal, and the geography made the detour easy.
Hence, Exercise resolution #2: "Stretch and do pushups before any shower".
The shower is the signal, and stretching/pushups is something I can do anywhere. Better yet, since I usually take a shower on those four days a week I go running (gregariously), I can do my stretching/pushups while I'm already warmed up and stinky.
2.
Likewise, a huge desire of mine is tokeep J-son out of jail/not let my family members strangle J-son have lots of regular "Time In"s with J-son. I also want to try to take care of some deferred maintenance on the house before my sabbatical is over.
Hence, Home resolution #4: "Weekly fix-it project with J-son".
3.
This next one is already one of my favorite ideas of the year for being convoluted in its conception, even though I have no idea if this'll actually work. I've mentioned once or twice that N-son has some mild physical issues because of a stroke -- one of these is that he slurs his words. This slurring is both persistent and mild: persistent in that all of our family and all of his teachers know that it's often hard to understand him, and mild in the sense that every speech therapist we've taken him to says he's fine. The most recent speech therapist noted it might be "laziness" -- rather, that he speaks well when that's his only task, but when he gets distracted with other thoughts (especially in crowds) he just relaxes his mouth a lot. He needs some strength training, she suggested. And on a completely different side of N-son, he's loving playing drums and also the new mostly-adult chorus he's joined, both for the music but also for the no-judgment camaraderie that his new social circles provide him.
Hence, Home resolution #1: "Find affordable voice lessons for N-son".
(Don't you love it? Building on his current passion, but also giving him a backdoor to speech therapy . . . I'm so psyched about the potential for this idea. We've already found some $1/minute lessons; but I don't think we want to put quite that much money into it if we can find a more frugal alternative).
So here, below, are three of my favorite twisted "resolutions" for 2016, along with a description of how & why I came up with these particular ideas.
1.
What I really want to do (that is, the goal behind the resolution) is build up my upper-body strength: lift weights more often, do pushups, yadda yadda. In the past, there have been times when I just *loved* lifting -- bur recently, as much as I love the idea of it, I somehow just never seem to get started. So putting on my thinking cap about what was different then than now, it was that the love-lifting-times came when I had a natural clothing transition time that coincided with a lifting space -- for example, I was going from class to swimming, so I happened to be right near the weight machines right as I was changing from normal clothes into other clothes. In that situation, a small detour to the weight machine just seemed like a gift to my body and my mood. What worked was a combination: the swim was a signal, and the geography made the detour easy.
Hence, Exercise resolution #2: "Stretch and do pushups before any shower".
The shower is the signal, and stretching/pushups is something I can do anywhere. Better yet, since I usually take a shower on those four days a week I go running (gregariously), I can do my stretching/pushups while I'm already warmed up and stinky.
2.
Likewise, a huge desire of mine is to
Hence, Home resolution #4: "Weekly fix-it project with J-son".
3.
This next one is already one of my favorite ideas of the year for being convoluted in its conception, even though I have no idea if this'll actually work. I've mentioned once or twice that N-son has some mild physical issues because of a stroke -- one of these is that he slurs his words. This slurring is both persistent and mild: persistent in that all of our family and all of his teachers know that it's often hard to understand him, and mild in the sense that every speech therapist we've taken him to says he's fine. The most recent speech therapist noted it might be "laziness" -- rather, that he speaks well when that's his only task, but when he gets distracted with other thoughts (especially in crowds) he just relaxes his mouth a lot. He needs some strength training, she suggested. And on a completely different side of N-son, he's loving playing drums and also the new mostly-adult chorus he's joined, both for the music but also for the no-judgment camaraderie that his new social circles provide him.
Hence, Home resolution #1: "Find affordable voice lessons for N-son".
(Don't you love it? Building on his current passion, but also giving him a backdoor to speech therapy . . . I'm so psyched about the potential for this idea. We've already found some $1/minute lessons; but I don't think we want to put quite that much money into it if we can find a more frugal alternative).
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