Jeannie Vix

My Life By The Numbers

We are what we repeatedly do.  Someone said that.  And I’ve had a hard time BEING who I need to be.  Probably because I don’t DO enough of what I need to do.  So in the interest of avoiding the definition of insanity (doing the same things yet expecting different results), I’m trying to focus on what I DO, and to hold myself accountable to DO more of the things that I believe will bring me happiness, or at least, keep my pesky tendencies toward insanity at bay.

My 2015 — ‘by the numbers’ targets
Granted, this would have been much easier had I started on January 1st.  But for a variety of reasons, the beginning of the year is not just an uphill climb, or swimming upstream; it’s being a chubby salmon, basted in butter, scaling a waterfall.  In short: I’m lucky to start my resolutions by the Lunar New Year.  (And this was not my lucky year.) Nonetheless, here’s what I’m shooting for:

365 Happy or Positive Things
An average of 1 happy thing per day. These don’t have to be giant things, but the idea is I need to look for and make happen at least one happy thing per day.  Sometimes there will be pictures. Sometimes not. Given that it’s April 13, I have a lot of catching up to do.  I’m hoping the result is that as a general rule, I will know there’s something good to be had or experienced each day.  this may sound trivial, but it’s very far from my recent mindset.  My recent mindset is veering into the ‘danger to self’ zone.  And I’m trying to turn it around.  I’ve tried various things.  I’m trying this now.

50 Creative Things
I’m one of those ‘creative types’.  There are a lot of us out there.  We vary in the type and, some would say, quality of our output.  But for many of us, act of generating the output is what is important.  To DO something that engages that side of the brain and makes ‘something’ from chaotic or disparate elements — THAT is what feeds our souls.  Whether the result is judged as good or valuable by everyone else is not the point.  To create something, as only I can do it, that is what I need more of in my life.  50 Creative Things is an approximately 1 per week.  Most will be small.  Some will be bigger.  If I take on something large, its component parts may qualify as individual ‘things’. These may overlap with my other categories

Fitness Numbers
I have set various fitness goals.  I probably won’t post them here. I can tend to get obsessed in the fitness space.  And it’s an area in which I need to improve.  But my recent trip down  the ‘Fitness Obsession Highway’ saw me meticiulously documenting EVERYTHING I ate for over 5 weeks straight, without a morsel of ‘cheat’ food.  I added exercise a couple weeks in and was doing a solid 6 workouts per week, approximately 45-90 minutes/each.  Some would label this as a success.  And while I do enjoy certain workouts, shortly after the 5-week mark, I had a major meltdown because I realized that I had nothing ‘happy’ in my life.  Sure, exercise produces some adrenaline.  But for me, I had no happy, on a regular basis.  And I’m not going to lie: chocolate is happy.  Donuts are happy.  Fluffy, white carbs are a hug from home, sometimes.  And cutting out what was really my only source of happy without replacing it with some kind of real, non-food ‘happy’ meant even my fitness willpower was not sustainable.  So my focus here is adding other kinds of happy.  Because that’s what I really need.

I know there are many paths to happiness.  I’m not saying this is the end-all/be-all or the only way.  This is not a substitute for finding Jesus.  (He and I are in touch, so no need to send me an invite to His house.) But what I’ve been doing isn’t working.  So I’m trying this.  I ‘m trying to focus on DOING more happy; I believe this will result in BEING more happy.  Feel free to follow along or join me in the journey.

XX (kisses, not Roman numerals — although in the context of the above, that could be confusing),

Jeannie Vix