Jolt Country

Are you the type of person that makes New Year's Resolutions? I do every year, but I used to have a friend who detested them and said they were a waste of time. "If you want to change your life, change it today. Don't wait until January," he used to say. (Ironically, he never changed anything.)

If you do, what kind of resolutions do you normally make, and are you normally successful in your resolutions? If not, how long do you make it?

They say that to be successful, your resolutions should be concrete goals and not generic statements. "I will lose 1 pound a week" is a good one; "I will lose weight" is not. Too hard to gauge success with goals like that.

I am working on a list of resolutions for the upcoming year. I'll post them here when I get them all done. Feel free to share yours as well.

Flack wrote:Are you the type of person that makes New Year's Resolutions?

No

If you do, what kind of resolutions do you normally make, and are you normally successful in your resolutions? If not, how long do you make it?

I'll usually make resolutions like promising never to use vowels, or not using a verb in a sentence, then I discover I'm too weak to keep my promises.

They say that to be successful, your resolutions should be concrete goals and not generic statements. "I will lose 1 pound a week" is a good one; "I will lose weight" is not. Too hard to gauge success with goals like that.

A goal needs a measurable factor via a time limit or time certain, otherwise, well, what you do is, the month of October you go on a severe fast so you lose weight, because you gain a lot from Thanksgiving, then do the same thing in the three weeks of December, binge on Christmas, then on Dec. 31, you weigh yourself and you lost 1/2 an ounce. Yeah, you kept your resolution, but it didn't have serious measurable goals.

Feel free to share yours as well.

I promise not to use any weapons of mass destruction this year, unless I can target one on a city of pure spammers and scammers, in which case even the Tsar Bomba won't be big enough!

Otherwise I promise not to kill anyone unnecessarily. If I kill anyone this year, it was necessary. Trust me.

I also promise not to
* drive drunk;
* rape anyone;
* destroy the rain forest;
* practice Satanism; or
* pull the tags off of mattresses.

Oh shit, I'm violating the rule about definite time limits! Okay, I promise
* not to kill anyone unnecessarily during the first week in January
* not to use any Weapons of Mass Destruction during the first two weeks in January, and
* not to do any of the other things I promised during the rest of January.

Flack wrote:Feel free to share yours as well.

I hereby fucking promise, with all my goddam heart, not to use any cocksucking profanity or otherwise motherfucking swear, or any of that shit. On December 22, 2012 or after.

(I can get away with this because the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus predicted the world ends on December 21, 2012. This promise is retroactively revoked if the world doesn't end on that date certain. If it does, I'm going to be really pissed!)

Oh, but what about The 11 days, did anyone take that into account?

I was always hazy on the whole resolution thing, but then I was always hazy on why the new year was in December instead of spring.
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Wouldn't a resolution be a change that an individual would have some control over?
Do you have access to WMDs? and if so can you make a WMD video?


I already made the changes, I guess the resolution is just continuing them, no matter what social, emotional and environmental changes take place.

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Things like: 'Never watch television' aren't really feasible.
Things like: 'Avoid more television' are better, but not terribly concrete.
Things like: 'Throw a brick through the television' are much better.
Actually I'd keep the TV, but only use it for the PS3.


THE
OPIATE OF THE MASSES
AARDVARK

AArdvark wrote:Things like: 'Throw a brick through the television' are much better.
Actually I'd keep the TV, but only use it for the PS3.

I prefer the incident from the movie Prince of Tides where the father won't even bother with one of his kids' birthday celebration, preferring to watch TV. So the older son, completely disgusted with his father, and deciding to take revenge upon him, goes into the closet, gets the shotgun, loads it, takes aim, and BLAM! Then he says to the father, "TV's broken, you son-of-a-bitch, now you can watch your son's birthday."

THE
OPIATE OF THE MASSES
AARDVARK

'Vark, Karl Marx said that Religion was the opiate of the masses, not television. He didn't live long enough, I guess.

Come to think of it, now we'd probably say that "Television is the crystal meth of the masses." Or maybe that's video games?

'Vark, Karl Marx said that Religion was the opiate of the masses, not television. He didn't live long enough, I guess.

Karl Marx hasn't seen anything yet!


I know who said it, I got that from Calvin and Hobbes




THE
EYEROLL
AARDVARK

My apologies to everyone for TDarcos' derailing of this thread. Please skip over his responses and help get things back on track.

Personally, I don't see a difference between a New Year and a new moment, as they both let you mold and shape a habit, thought or idea... And instead of holding off and cultivating guilt when a resolution doesn't progress when an arbitrary marker is reached, I normally implement an idea and enjoy seeing how it changes, how it twists, mutates, and develops as opposed to being a static implementation.

So, right... Not a big fan of New Year Resolutions.

I'll give two anyway..

1) Learn and memorize the process of properly tying my helmet in place.

2) Spend $0 on entertainment.

Wow, that second one is a biggie. What is your definition of entertainment? Movies and video games, sure, but what about things like Internet access?

Anything that is superfluous to my existence: internet / e-mail access is more or less a requirement for me (some of my work involves remote desktop management and script editing, simplifying the debate), but the only borderline elements that I've allocated money to for the new year are...

Year round expenses:

1) Gym

2) Martial Arts (and only half so far as I did last year)

Selective pursuits:

3) My book list

4) SCA Armor

Its partly out of a desire to be less distracted, partly out of the fact that I spent far too much time and money on trivialities this year, but the defining factor is if something isn't an extension of a continued pursuit, I'm eliminating it.

I need to focus.

That martial arts thing has to be the toughest. I knew a guy at work that was into teh karate. I went with him to the dojo one time, just to check it out and I must say it ain't no Chuck Norris walk in the park. I could never do it.

THE
APPLAUDING
AARDVARK

From my parents I inherited a high IQ, a smart mouth, and a slow metabolism -- a combination that can lead to years of schoolyard ass kickings. Fortunately they realized this pretty early on and enrolled me in "American Karate". I took lessons under 9th degree black belt [url=http://www.nationalkarateinc.com/staffm ... d=30385Jim Butin[/url] at Black Belt Karate Association for roughly 8 years. I went from being a white belt to being a semi-competent brown belt (our school would not allow people under 18 to be a black belt). I would not say I was a bad ass by any stretch of the imagination, but I held my own in a couple of scuffles.

When I turned 16 I got my driver's license and discovered girls and pretty much quit going to Karate.

About 10 years later, I got re-interested in martial arts and decided to look up my old school. Turns out they were having a tournament that weekend, so I drove up there, found Jim, and said hello to him. I mentioned starting back up lessons and he said that would be great and mentioned the fact that I would have to start over on the belt system.

What? ME? A WHITE BELT? I don't THINK so. I was truly offended by this. To show him that I wasn't kidding around, I decided to go home and do some of the moves I remembered (trust me, after performing Chung-Gi 9,000 times, you don't forget it). Needless to say, I was surprised at how out of shape I was. I could barely kick waist high, and standing in those deep stances killed my thighs and calves. I was so embarrassed at what I had become that I never went back to his school.

If there is a silver lining in this cloud at all it's that I got really fucking good at Street Fighter IV, for what it's worth.

Flack wrote: Needless to say, I was surprised at how out of shape I was. I could barely kick waist high, and standing in those deep stances killed my thighs and calves.

After my body rebelled at being pushed into practice six times a week, I took two weeks off and discovered that I lost 2/3rds of my conditioning when I returned. The next three months consisted of me nearly blacking out thrice, being physically exhausted after warmups and routinely falling behind in class. Finally, I decided to take the remainder of the year and work on basic conditioning as opposed to "body strength through practice."

For the past two months I've been running, lifting weights (and losing the more physiological kind), and going to yoga regularly. I'm feeling much better in a general sense, though after trying to chain yoga classes together, I discovered that there is still the possibility of burn out. I need to maintain a "every other day" routine for any defined, major activity otherwise my body doesn't have time to recover and I require a period of rest.

So... Lesson learned.

Tdarcos wrote:

Flack wrote:Feel free to share yours as well.

I hereby fucking promise, with all my goddam heart, not to use any cocksucking profanity or otherwise motherfucking swear, or any of that shit. On December 22, 2012 or after.

(I can get away with this because the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus predicted the world ends on December 21, 2012. This promise is retroactively revoked if the world doesn't end on that date certain. If it does, I'm going to be really pissed!)

Oh, but what about The 11 days, did anyone take that into account?

This isn't funny.

RetroRomper wrote:I'll give two anyway..

1) Learn and memorize the process of properly tying my helmet in place.

2) Spend $0 on entertainment.

God, I was looking back on what I spent this year. I have thrown so much money at eating out and arcade stuff. I gotta knock that off.

When (sometimes-poster) the Milker got hired where I work, I knew we'd go out to lunch often. It's a great way to break up the day. I have been spending between $200 and $300 a month on restaurants the last three months. Some of that is because I have taken my girl out, but Jesus: it's just too much.

The whole thing I do where I buy circuit boards and can't play the games has to stop as well. And yet I would like a pinball, you know?

I spent something like $12 and got three new games over Steam's holiday sale. THAT is the sort of entertainment expenses I ought to be having. Not $650 for Marble Madness.

So that is my resolution. These are my resolutions. I'm already going to get fitter and run a 5K. That's a given. These are the things I want to do:

- No more than $100 a month eating out. (Meaning, if I take my gal out to a $50 dinner, well, that's 5 times I can't eat out at lunch)

- No solo entertainment expenses over $20 for the first six months. At least.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I'm already going to get fitter and run a 5K. That's a given.

Were both slowly working on the milestones of the Couch to 5k work out regiment, correct? If so, I'll add a third resolution...

3) Run a 5k near or before ICJ's own personal deadline to run a 5k.

If you provide a month and a general estimate of when (either the first or last half) within that time frame, I'll join you in your QUEST FOR HEALTH.

That's cool. It gives me a personal deadline. Right now I can do running in chunks of seven minutes with no problem. Well, it's a huge problem, but you know what I mean.

Just to be safe, because it's so frigging cold in Denver these days, why don't I shoot for the weekend of March 3rd, 2012. Basically two months + the rest of this week.

I'll try to find where there is a 5K in Denver and sign up after I get paid at the end of the week. (No New Taxes.)

How much does it normally cost to run in a marathon?

Only in America can people charge other people to run. I suspect on the plains of Africa, people have done it for free for generations.

Flack wrote:How much does it normally cost to run in a marathon?

The Boston Marathon charges $150, and a quick survey of various 5k events, show that they range from anywhere between $25 to $75 with the majority being charity based.