Out with a bang and starting fresh

I love the new year, and that ultimate "starting fresh" feeling that comes with symbolically letting go of last year and planning adventures for the next. Our anniversary is on New Years Eve, and so we always make a point to go big when it comes to the celebration. Last night was no exception - lots of surprises, fun, and indulgences, and in general just an amazing experience with my husband. Ending 2013 with such a bang has energized me at the start of 2014.

Though it's back to the office and life as usual tomorrow after a nine day staycation, I'm looking forward to putting in the work to truly be happy this year. My resolutions are to:

• Move every day - the daily goal is to do some exercise at least 15 minutes a day, even if its just a walk. With a marathon on the calendar and a return to cross fit this month, I expect to do much more training most days, but this goal is designed to give me an "at the very least" daily minimum. Exercise has a huge effect on my mood and lowering my stress. This goal is as much to look good and feel good with those happy exercise hormones.

• Read at least 10 minutes a day - again, this is a daily minimum to create healthy, long term habits. I hope to get in much more time!

• Post to the blog at least 3 times a week - sharing can be scary, but two weeks in, and I can tell that this whole blogging thing is good for me.

• Eat in and bring lunch to work more often - planning and prepping meals in advance should help with this one. 

• Work on my marriage - this involves a few different things, but generally this means purposefully connecting with my husband when life gets chaotic for either or both of us. 

• Spend 10 minutes a day on cleaning and chores - a little bit every day so that weekends feel less like work days. 

• Respond to personal messages timely - my work involves a ton of quick communication online, and because of this I tend to avoid responding to messages from family and friends right away because it feels like work. I don't plan to be at the mercy of my inbox, but a few minutes of dedicated messaging each daily will be better than feeling guilty about not responding to things.

• Eat clean - less processed stuff, more of the good stuff - juicing, home cooking, tea, and raw foods.

• Stress less about work - I'm not quite sure yet how to go about this. I think most of my anxiety about work comes from the fact that I'm still fairly new at my company. Just getting through the year focused on doing a good job will go far, and reminding myself that I don't have to be perfect.

• Spend less money - we're going back to our jar system starting today. I'll create a post about this in a bit, but it's a method I made up last year that helps us budget our individual, non-essential spending. The system works when we're both on board, but we got lazy about it as life got crazy in the last 6 months. 

It seems like a lot, and statistics say that I will probably fail at all of these, but I'm feeling particularly optimistic and motivated these days. We will see..