Resolutions and Alpha Centauri

Here are my thoughts on New Year’s resolutions (and goals in general): they need to be short, simple, specific, measurable, realistic, easy to remember, and before you set them you need to realize that success (or failure) is not measured by how well you keep the goal itself, but what you accomplish as you strive to keep the goal. Of course, they should also stretch you, but at the same time you need to recognize that you have limitations, and that if you set a really hard goal in one area, it’s going to limit the amount of energy you can put into another difficult goal in another area. In general, I think it’s better to set one or two goals and achieve them than to set a dozen goals, overwork yourself, and fail to meet any of them. So here are my New Year’s resolutions (and I only really have two of them):

1) Read a book every week
2) Don’t eat any food in front of the TV or the computer

That’s on top of the goals that I’ve already set for myself (finish rough draft of The Lost Colony by April, write 500+ words every day, write every day, update the photoblog every day), so I think I’m doing pretty good.

I would like to read a book every week because I think that it’s one of the truly worthwhile forms of entertainment (depending, of course, on the quality of the book), better than TV or computer games, etc. Also, I want to become much more familiar with the sci fi and fantasy genres, which means that I’ve got a lot of reading to do.

As for the second resolution, it has to do with this book I read over the summer that my sister recommended to me: Intuitive Eating. It is an excellent book on fitness and healthy living that operates in a whole different paradigm from all the other literature on dieting and weight loss–and because of that, it’s actually got some value to it. I’m hoping to be more fit this next year (gosh, who isn’t?) and this will help by helping me to be more intuitive about how I eat. Instead of starving myself, or imposing all these arbitrary dieting restrictions that lead to overeating once the diet is over, it makes more sense just to be intuitive about it: eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, follow what your body tells you. My problem is that when I eat in front of the TV or computer, I’m not paying attention to these things, so it’s a lot easier to overeat. With this goal, I’m hoping that I can break those habits and eat more intuitively.

Last year my resolution was to not drink any soda–and I was surprisingly successful with it! Didn’t drink hardly anything (not intentionally anyways) until last week–but I modified the resolution over the summer when I started reading Intuitive Eating to “avoid soda,” since one of the principles of intuitive eating is that you don’t set absolute dieting restrictions, like “no this, no that.” So, I consider that a resolution that I actually kept–and that I’m going to keep up with. If the same thing happens with these ones, I will be very happy!

And so, to close this post, I thought I’d share this with you guys:

I’m flying back to Utah tomorrow, even though we’ve got nearly a week left before school starts. At first, I thought it was going to suck. But then I realized that it would give me some time to enjoy this game with some friends of mine (like my friend Dan, who gave me the game).

It is an AWESOME strategy game with an excellent sci fi story! Basically, it follows the different factions in the Centauri system as they cultivate Planet and rebuild civilization. They encounter an alien ecology, which is sometimes hostile, and also engage in rivalries and warfare with each other. As they grow, humanity morphs and changes, and when the planet awakens, it spurs a race that eventually leads one faction to transcend and merge their consciousness’ with the stars.

However, I haven’t gotten to that point yet in my own gameplay: building cities, developing a civilization, and cultivating my part of the planet is fun enough for me (not to mention waging war with the more belligerent factions!). Patterned after Civilization II, this is definitely one of the best strategy games ever written.

Which is also my problem: I tend to get addicted to this kind of stuff. I’m really hoping that if I can spend some time before school starts (not all my time), I can get it out of my system and then be ready to focus on school once it starts. Of course, last time I said that it didn’t work out that way (damn you, Sid Meier, for making such a freaking awesome game! Damn you!), but I can always hope.

I’ll do something different this time, maybe set a timer or alarm clock next to the computer so that I can break out of it. Learn to discipline myself. If I can discipline myself to not play this game all the time, heck, I can discipline myself to do anything!. And if not, well, I can always delete it. 🙁

We’ll see.