2013 review / New years resolutions

OK, so I'm starting the new year with a glass of champagne for breakfast - dart the way you mean to go on as far as I'm concerned.  Then it'll be roast duck for lunch, cooked by my own hand...  It's all starting to be a yearly tradition.

Anyway to the review.  Looking back at what I said this time last year, there were a few areas that I challenged myself on:


1.  Eating.   - Doing well, I have managed to pretty much stick to 5 controlled days and 2 naughty days per week.  There's been the occasional slip- and the occasional deliberate subversion of the rules.  Anyway, mission accomplished.

2.  Drinking. - so I'm now down to drinking 2 nights per week, usually on the 'naughty' days, with food, but occasionally I have separated them.

3.  Hygiene. - Big change, I have re-discovered Lush bath bombs!  More than happy to spend hours in the bath now!  Only down side is that my water bill has gone up as a result!

4.  Exercise.  - BIG WIN!  I've been going to the gym regularly, usually around 3 times a week, commitments permitting.  The results have been astounding - I have lost 4st 13lb in a year!  I was so desperately trying to get to the 5stone mark but ultimately I am not going to lie or cheat myself.  I missed the 5 stone (just) but it's still an epic win.  I also have the beginnings of a 'body' starting to develop, my weight living capacity has improved vastly and I have some serious muscle tone underneath once I can shift the rest of the fat.

Also this year a truly unexpected event has happened.  What started as a major threat to life stability ahas turned out to be a massive opportunity for progress.  I now own my own home.  Having been given notice to vacate due to the land lady selling up, I was able to put together the finances to purchase the property myself.

I have also managed to achieve another big move forward - I have sorted out my long term finances with various investments and protections, through the advice of my finical adviser, plus I managed to get shares in the Post Office.

SO all in all, it's been a year of good achievement and of notable progress.

I think at this point I need to stop and give thanks to God for what I have received.  I am truly grateful.  I think that I have achieved much of this through my own effort, but with the Lords grace and favour to provide the opportunities and to give me the strength to actually see through the intentions that I have started with so many times before.


SO we move on to this year, the big '14...  What am I going to target myself to achieve?  What will I ask the Lord to give me the strength and opportunity to achieve?

Well, I think I want to carry on with the weight loss a little further,  I have come so far but not yet reached my target goal.  I also need to make good on a 'pinky swear' that I made with a friend - to actually bite the bullet and get into online dating and begin the process of finding a partner.

So in short, I think 2014 is a year of consolidation in many respects.  Last year I changed who I physically am, this year I need to learn to accept that, become confident in that and begin to realise the worth in it.  And so I set my goals thusly;

Weight / Gym:
To loose a further amount of weight with a joint goal of reaching either 11.5 stone (a 1 stone 8 lb reduction from where I am)  OR to reach 25% body fat (currently 32%).  I choose this as a joint goal as I also intend to focus far more on the body building and weight lifting which will result in some muscle gain and increase in weight through that.

To reach a stage where I am confident enough to go shirtless when I am on holiday in France next year - subjective I know - and I'm the one used to using SMART objectives!  However, it's important for 2 reasons, firstly it's an obvious visual measure of my success, but secondly it's also a confidence thing...

Lord, please grant me the self belief and confidence to achieve this.

Personal Life
To find the right place to start looking for love online, to avoid the meat market of the less moral on line dating sites in the hope of finding someone with similar values who might actually be interested in me as a person.

Lord, please grant me the guidance to avoid situations that would have me compromise my moral values and show me to somewhere that I may actually find people that I have a chance of happiness with.

Other
To consolidate on what I have achieved in 2013, to make good to those who have helped me along the way and to make sure that what I have is secure.

Lord,  you gave me so much last year and I am truly thankful.  Please help me to get back to my Faith and the strength that it gives me, to find the way forward to people that I can share my life with.

Please help me to appreciate what I have and to see the way forward to better myself and be happy.

It's a selfish ask, I know, but once I am strong, I can use that strength to help others.

IJN, Amen

Getting all emotional again

Sunday was an amazing day for me - I  became a Godfather for the first time, to my best friend's youngest.  To some people I guess that it isn't a big deal but to me it's really important.  One thing that I think I am realising is that I am actually now as ready as I will ever be for children of my own.  Only thing is, the person that I can't help but think about having them with.

I need to get my head straight.  To say that I am feeling broody is an understatement but its the rest of it that seems so hard.  My heart is giving me  away again.  As much as my God daughter is important to me in a way that no-one else is, I want a family of my own and the person that I have feelings for is pretty much everything that I would ever want the mother of my child to be.

But I really can't be thinking like this anymore.  No matter how much  have prayed for it - and Lord knows, I have prayed enough - it doesn't seem like it is in His plan.  And the person that I want seems to be happy with who they are with.  I would't want them to be unhappy either.  So what I am left with is the basic option that has been in front of me all this time.  Get myself fit and in good shape so that I have confidence and deserve what I am asking for, and then look for someone that might actually be available.

So I guess that, really, not much has changed, other than I am now really broody to add to the confusion in my head.

What I need to do is take some of this confusion and turn it against myself.  I feel like crying right now - and I don't really know what for, or what about.  It just seems like a well of emotions that need to be let out some how.   I need to take that and turn it towards myself.  I can see the signs of what in the past could trigger a binge eating session, a sort of urge to self harm though food.  I need / want to take that urge and turn it back on myself in the sense that the power of that urge is put into not eating and the self destructive notion becomes exercise at the gym.

All I really want right now is someone to cuddle up to and have them tell me that they care about me.  I guess I am just feeling a little bit vulnerable and a bit lonely right now.

Messengers

Sometimes the Lord seems to choose the strangest messengers.  Sometimes the message isn't quite what you were expecting!  I went to see an old friend yesterday - I haven't seen them for nearly a year, last time was at their wedding.  Anyway, besides the realisation that I need to make an effort to see them more often, comes the the strangest of experiences.

Firstly, their wife, who I have to admit that I don't really know that well yet as I have only met her a couple of times, starts having a whole heart to heart with me about finding the right person and how I still have time to have a family etc.  That really is a strange conversation to have with someone that you don't really know but it felt like a natural conversation.  I think it's fair to say that I really wasn't expecting that kind of message.  More to the point, I am really happy with the sentiment of it.  I mean. it's what I really wanted to hear.  Somehow I just have to believe that it will happen.  The only thing that might cause a set back is the 'problem'.  I guess I have to believe that for the right person, it wont be a problem any more and that there will be a way around things.

Secondly, having spent the day around their two little ones I suddenly realise that looking after children is not as hard as I though it was going to be.  Ok, yes I know that it was only one day but both of them were feeling under the weather and playing up a bit and I felt absolutely fine dealing with it all.  In the afternoon we went out for a bit and I ended up looking after one of them for a while and dealing with what they were throwing at me.  I think that I coped pretty well.  Yes I'm sure that there is much that I have to learn and at some point in the future if I have kids they will have me pulling my hair out and ready to scream blue murder - but the first work of not being able to do it has gone.  Also, despite being a majorly big kid at heart, I've always found it difficult to know what to say to kids when they are too young to have an adult level conversation.  I think I learned a fair amount on that front too, not perfected the technique yet but I learned so much in the space of 12 hours that I honestly believe that if I need to learn 'on the job' in the future, I can do it.

So there we go, an unexpected message, a very strange choice of messenger - but thank you none the less.  Maybe when I fasted a while back, it took a little time for the answer to be given.  I really feel like  so much of what was on my mind has had an answer given.  Not all of it, there was a question over my career too, but the idea of having a family and finding someone to settle down with is far more important and frankly something that I would rather focus on, God willing.

Trés Difficile

Title says it all.  For what is going on in my head right now is a bit of a mess.  WHat I think and feel don't seem to count, in as much as they are completely unobtainable feelings and thoughts.  Best left alone - pretty much like the rest of me!  I wish I didn't have these thoughts, and I have tried to put a positive spin on them from a certain angle.  I have to be careful what I say here, this blog could be read by the people concerned - it's no secret and whilst I don't think they pass this way, you never know.  Plausible deniability is everything (just ask the US government!).

So what it  comes down to is this.  This week I have been on holiday from work.  I haven't really done much, just pottered around at home and been lazy - exactly what I needed to do to get some passion back for work.  Its a job I enjoy but when you do it every day without time off you go stale.  So this time off, I've been thinking, not deliberately mid you, but thinking anyway.  And the same though comes back into my mind again and again.  Its not a great though from the point of view that its never going to happen, but the fact that I can even think about it gives me hope that all might not be lost.  It would be so easy just to start off... "I wish..."  "I want...", the difficult thing is not doing that and realising that I am to be strong and stick with it.  Its impractical and not right, Indeed not what is intended for me I am sure.

Despite the many heavenly blessings and the feeling that this could be a gift, I am pretty sure it is little more then the Devil tempting me.  Little more than a cheap offer for my soul.  It is an offer that is appealing to think of  but it cannot and will not be.  I must be strong in the face of this temptation, true to what I believe and hope that I can find what I am thinking of in another time and place when it is from the Lord and not the Devil.

Instead of "I wish..." , "I hope..."

"Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."
           - Tim Robbins, as Andy Dufrense - The Shawshank Redemption