A New Year

I have a bunch of professional resolutions this year.  There are things I really want to change in my attitude and performance regarding my job.  But I also have a few personal things I want to try to be better at.  Since I'm a sucker for accountability, I'll write them here and check in occasionally on how I'm doing.

- Eat better and move more.  Peter and I say the best diet plan is "Eat less s*** and move your a**".  I'm not really feeling the need to diet, but I do want to try to reduce the amount of garbage I eat even more than I have since moving to Spain.  I walk a TON here, but I also want to purposefully carve out space for actual cardio exercise that leaves me sweating and strength training/pilates work.  I feel better when I do it, so I need to be consistent about it.  Once there's daylight for hours besides when I am at work, I also want to try to start running so Pete and I can run a 5k.  We'll see how that goes.

- Worry only about things I can control.  If I can't control it, I don't get to worry about it.  Either it will happen or it won't and worrying about it only causes me stress.  Those things I can control, I can worry about, but only if I'm taking actionable steps to get the outcome I want.  So I'm allowed to worry about job applications while I'm sending them in, or job interviews while I prepare for them.  But I am not allowed to worry about the decisions the committees make while the application is out of my hands.  Either they like me enough to interview or hire me or they don't.  Either there's a job in academia for me this year, or there's not.  If there's not, I'll figure things out at that point, but no worrying until this point.  This is a really, really important one for me.  Worrying about jobs, getting a job in the US, when I will be able to live in the same place as Pete again has taken up tons of my mental energy while living in Spain.  Sometimes, it's gotten in the way of me enjoying the fact that I live in a beautiful city in an interesting country with great people and have a great job.  I need to focus more on being grateful for that ... which leads me to the final resolution.

- Be happy for what I have instead of lamenting what I don't.  Sure, I'd love a tenure-track job in Chicago where I could be with Pete and Sophie all the time.  But I don't have that.  Instead, I have a great job that I love and that I'm good at where I learn new things every day, and get to have this crazy ridiculous adventure.  I have a husband who supports me.  I have a whole lot more than a lot of people and I want to try to just be more peaceful with that instead of always wanting more.  I don't want to be one of those people who is never satisfied ...

So that's the plan.  Hopefully I can be a little bit better about these goals every day.  I'll keep you posted.