Be Excellent To Each Other

I am not one for resolutions, but I like to set goals.

Fitness I have this covered this year.
Career. Looking at industry 4.0 and smart factory as it very interesting.

Personal goals. I am not sure and a bit stuck. Other than my Iva ending not a clue. Thinking of being more kind to myself and look at my mental health more.

Any suggestions.

You should really start another thread asking for recommendations...

Ha ha

I like this one. I'm trying to reduce obsessing over cringe-worthy stuff in past and trying to think about the good stuff, cut down the self-deprecation, and trying not to apologise for everything.

I definitely want to buy another house this summer.

I also want to have submitted some of my work towards my Chartership.

Hopefully we will go back to America.

Finally getting the extension sorted and a decent kitchen to work in.

Shift some of this flab would be good too.

Hit 1 hour 50 mins time in a half marathon. I have possibly three bites at this cherry.

Finish a PS4 game.LOLZ

Survive work.

Get my stupid model people painted.

Have a holiday.

High five three rock stars at green man.

Ooh, lists? I'm in.

Lose some body fat. I know I can do this after screwing the nut before Christmas and dropping half a stone in three weeks; just need to get back into the mindset in January. I work hard as fuck at the gym and have a genuinely impressive (by my standards) level of muscle going on and I'm getting annoyed with it being buried under kilos of fat. Time to sort it.

Take proper charge of more stuff at work. People trust me to do so and would welcome it, just need to seek out some stuff I don't not give a fuck about. We have a lot of young and so inexperienced people in the team who seem to like/trust me and are understandably not comfortable taking massive charge of stuff so there a lot of scope here. It doesn't come at all naturally to me though so I need to force myself to do it somewhat.

Sort some minor shit in the flat which laziness has prevented me doing since I moved in a few months back e.g. new flooring in the kitchen, run ethernet cable in a way that isn't an embarrassment, get ridiculous hole into the cupboard roof from the communal attic sorted, etc.

Connect more with friends. When I was single I was all about this and was proud of making sure I regularly connected with everyone I care about. Being in a relationship for the last year and a bit has made me complacent in that regard (myp can almost certainly testify here!) and it doesn't help that Aran's a bit shy (in principle; though she's honestly great company when she gets in about it) so it's been easier just to do our own thing for ages now. This will be more challenging of course because I need to juggle my wants with her needs but that's not an excuse not to try; which is kind of what's been happening recently.

Survive until Animal Crossing comes out. Maybe another two weeks afterwards so I can play it a bit.

Definite Goal - lose some weight before it affects my health more than it already does
Maybe Goals - Change jobs or maybe switch to doing ConsoleMAD full-time (although the latter depends on whether we leave the customs union and possibly Brexit in general)

Fitness goals:
1) pass black stripe grading in March(ish) time
2) get a medal at my first powerlifting comp in July

Life goals:
1) re-establish some semblance of work/life balance - haven't really defined what this means yet, though
2) pay off either my loan or credit card this year

I want to learn how to dive into water. Something I’ve always been hesitant to try.

Improve my eating and drinking habits.

Exercise more.

Find a way to not mess up my stupidly good job.

Do all the above whilst also doing more with the wife and child.

To eat and drink more, or..?

Keep your elbows off the table, don't slurp your tea, stop snorting the salt etc.

Oh I have book....

Eat more healthy. Drink less alcohol.

Some great goals.

I need to read more for fun, I find it so relaxing.

I am so looking forward to being iva free..

That reminds me. Another goal of mine.. try and build up some savings to perhaps pay off my debts earlier. Currently, my debt-free date is around November 2021, but it'd be nice to shave off a few months from that ideally. Last year was the first year ever I've actually put any savings aside at all, so it's quite the novel experience.

Mine are dependably vague.

Smile more.

Maintain better eye contact when talking to people (not in a weird magician way).

Be more positive about work. I'm doing it for the foreseeable so should try and find pleasure in it.

Stop raising my voice to the children. It never helps the situation and is really just an expression of how annoyed I'm feeling.

Stop smoking.

The last two points aren't easily compatible.

Just checked my IVA it finishes in Feb not March.. I will be debt free in a month

I tried and maintained this for a while over the past year or two and it's FUCKING HARD. I grew up with an extremely shouty parent, and try as I might it's often my default response to a situation. You're right, it doesn't help and in fact often escalates whatever the issue is (especially with my daughter).

I tell myself off about shouting and repeat the process every now and again and each time it gets easier to keep it up / find alternate methods of dealing with things. I'm hoping one day it'll just be second nature to be completely calm and rational. For my sake and the kid's.

It's a worthy goal

If you've tried and maintained it then it's possible, no matter how hard. Hope I can achieve similar success!

I just find it hard when the child is being violent to be anything other than angrily reprimanding, even though I know it doesn't help. I'm going to be one of those people who wombles around the house whispering "soft voices" to an empty room, by the end of January.

I don't have a perfect record for maintaining it, let me make that 100% clear

It helps having Gaz there, as he's super calm 99% of the time.

I'm a shouter. Sometimes it the only thing that works.

I don't think I can imagine you shouting Davpaz.

Neither could I, until the school run on Monday mornings.

Only on a Monday? Man... That's good going. My girls always seem genuinely surprised that they've got to go to school every day and we have to go through the same routine every morning.

Also, I remember a time when my youngest was obsessed with the lumps in her socks. That was an interesting few weeks.

Currently on year 10 of this with my daughter.

You have my sympathies.

New Year Goals then.

1) keep going to the gym but more consistently. My issue is that I'll do a month of good training and then work/getting ill/going somewhere will get in the way and a week of inactivity will just kill my gains. So I just need to be a bit more on it. I'm not bad but I can definitely be better.

2) stop lecturing my mates about money. So this is a weird one. About seven years ago I had a realisation that I should start thinking about pensions and saving and all that. I spoke to one of the directors at work and said 'Chris, you're loaded what do you do with your money' and he explained SIPPs and Stocks and Shares ISAs. And ever since I've been saying to my mates 'you need to get this stuff sorted because we're [essentially old] and you're going to want to retire one day' but it sort of fell on deaf ears. It's a shame because I can see some of them sleepwalking into a total crisis if they don't start today but I'm tired of mithering them and I'm sure they are too. So I'm going to bite my tongue when my mate who rents in London, has nothing saved and doesn't earn much money tells me that he's leasing a new car or whatever.

3) drink more water. Like a lot more.

I never make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I am going to set myself a goal. I’m going to emotionally let go of the people I care about that have either done wrong by me or drifted away. People like one of my brothers, who I love dearly, but who just cannot show me any respect or decency. I will still love him, but if that is is choice, then that is ok. I don’t bug him or expect anything for him, but I feel the pangs of separation. My goal is to stop internalising that hurt and feeling pain from the situation. I want to have that healthy relationship with my grief and just accept.

And this runs to a number of people in various degrees of closeness.

Big fan of this.

The way I see it is this. They say life's too short but that's not it. Life's too long to spend it worrying about how people are going to treat you and it gets worse when you try to do more and more from them to win them over and make them change. They won't. They're either good for you or bad for you.

Had a lot of this in my wife's family. Her mum is one of the best people ever and we're super close. The mum's sister (Auntie Chris) and niece were disrespecting her, treating her INFINITE KINDNESS as weakness and reacting to baffling perceived non-existent wrongdoings as an equal weight to a lifetime of her doing so much for them.

Now it's not my business and so all I could do was support and advise a bit but then in December 2023 her sister (who is like 84) came to ours. We invited her and mum in law over for a cup of tea and some homemade brownies. Had a nice hour or so and then Chris picked that moment to start having yet another pop at my mum in law. Who, incidentally, put me and my wife up for 18 months when we sold our house and then got caught up in the Covid madness. This woman is an angel.

Thing is, now it was in my house and it was my turn to talk and rather than her tactic of five years of passive aggression I spelled it out like I was the prosecuting lawyer and, very calmly, destroyed her. She ran out of the house with her tail between her legs and none of our side of the family have seen that side of the family. Mum in law has never been happier, more comfortable and more protected. We appreciate her and she appreciates us. It's all love on this side of it and that's how it has to be. If you can't play nice, you're out.