The One About News Years Resolutions (a month and a half late)

Here are the things that I told myself I needed to do this year (in ascending order of difficulty to implement):

Stop letting TV rot my brain – One of the most intellectually stimulating times in my life is when I was an obituary editor (just let that thought sink in) who could not afford cable.  My boss at the time was also a part time movie critic.  He’d load me up with suggestions every week and I’d watch them on my portable DVD player on the hour train ride to grad school.  So off I went, cancelling cable this year and left my entertainment choices up the capable hands of Netflix.  The results are mixed.  I do not recommend attempting to watch The Diving Bell and The Butterfly at midnight when you’re already half asleep.  However, if you have not seen Freaks and Geeks, you haven’t lived.

Eat something interesting for breakfast – Cereal and I had needed to break up for over a year.  But laziness and inertia had kept me from cutting the cord and finding a better option.  One day I hit the cheerios wall and decided to start scouring food blogs for ideas on healthy breakfasts.  This lead to …

Learn how to bake – I have been an avid cook for many years.  For those of you who have had my home made hummus, you’re welcome.  But I had always snubbed my nose at baked goods because it requires precision, adds more calories into your life and makes a mess out of your kitchen.  Now that I have a dishwasher and an aversion to everything I used to eat for breakfast, it seemed like it was time to start making some morning muffins.  And this has led to the inevitable – hundreds of dollars thrown at Target and Trader Joe’s acquiring exotic flours and muffin tins.  (No word yet on what it has done to my waist line).

Really LIVE in Los Angeles – Now that I’ve moved, I have whittled down the list of the excuses that kept me from enjoying the rest of the city.  I look forward to wonders beyond my West LA bubble which will lead me to sleeping overnight on Skid Row, punching hipsters in Silver Lake, vomiting in Beverly Hills and conceiving a child in Pasadena.

Be a better daughter – this one is tough to work on when you live thousands of miles away.  But I’m also getting to an age where I realize that geography is not a valid excuse for not being a participant in your family’s life.  I’ve given a critical eye to my stance that my life choices reflect my independence when they often may just reflect my selfishness. 

Work out before work – one of these days I will admit to myself that this will never happen.  I will always and forever work out after work.

And as a side note, apparently my blog goal was to either make a joke about suicide or incorporate Jason Segel into every post.