The thing about January

There's nothing spectacular about January. Next to the glamor and glitz of December, it's downright dull. And in the inversion-trapped valley of Salt Lake, not even sunlight can brighten things up a bit.

But January has one redeeming quality (besides basketball): it kicks off the new year. The sun rises and sets on the new year just like any other day, but because the last digit of the year changes, so does your mindset. Everything from budgets to will power resets.

And I do love resetting. I love New Year's resolutions. Those predictable comments about how everyone forgets their resolutions by January 15? I ignore those. I'm not ruling out failure entirely, but my resolutions in recent years have meant too much to me to become the brunt of another not-funny joke.

This isn't the kind of mindset that can be summoned on just any random day of the year. But it always comes during the first week of January.

Don't let the return-to-normal-sleep-schedule failure and the resulting headache stop you from plowing forward.

Progress report

I know I've mentioned this before, but the theme I inflicted upon myself for 2014 is Be Bold. To help keep this theme in mind, I decided I would do one bold thing a month. (Which seems a little wimpy after you've been writing about bold living for 26 days, but, it's important to start small.)

So I've compiled a progress report for how I've been doing up to this point. (Good thing I have my journals handy. It's hard to do these types of personal evaluations without them.)

January
I did sealings at the temple for the first time.

February
I mastered the art of bread making. And I gave my two weeks notice. That was the hardest part of the quitting process.

March
Since it was too hard to be friendly, I decided to try a different tact: make it easier for others to be friendly to me. I did this by making the silliest goal ever: getting to church a few minutes late every week so I would be forced to sit by someone during sacrament meeting. I did the same sort of thing for Sunday School. It worked surprisingly well—a lot of ice was unthawed that month.

Oh, and I started a new job and finished my master's degree.

April
I got some party invites, and I actually went to a couple of them.

May
I took a golf lesson, and learned that it can be fun if you let it.

June
I went snorkeling. Which, despite the annoying equipment required and the panic you have to overcome to be able to breathe underwater, turned out to be really awesome. I also kissed a dolphin. Which was weird.

July
There was this guy on my softball team I liked, so I decided to get to know him a little better instead of keeping my distance and hoping he would somehow feel a deep connection between us and approach me out of the blue. A few weeks later he started dating another girl in the ward.

August
I played on my stake's all-star softball team. No longer the best female player on the team, it took a lot more guts to show up and play. Not that I should have worried, though; the more intense the competition is, the less the guys will trust the girls with the ball, so it's not like we were expected to do much anyway.

September
One of my coworkers quit, which ended my role as the newbie who's still learning things. I had to take on a lot more responsibilities and be more assertive overall. (Remember when I said I would cry if October was as bad as September? Well, that's pretty much the new normal now.) It was quite a learning curve, and I made some mistakes along the way, but it's been good for me.

October
I've said enough about October. Go over here for a recap.

New year tidbits

We're in the thick of reality now. Five full work days this week. Five full school days, as well. Sigh.

I spent several hours last week rearranging my apartment. I didn't sleep well Saturday night because my room felt weird.

Yesterday, my ward doubled in size. The reason? Switching from 9:00 church to 1:00 church.

I'm thinking of chronicling my "be" resolution on this blog this year as an added incentive to actually do it. Still debating about that.

Speaking of goals, I finished re-compiling my first journal book (birth through middle school) last night. As I was formatting the index, I stopped to look up all the goals I had set. Here are some of my favorites:

• Only be an idiot if everyone's in the right mood
• Don't be so slow at card games
• Don't put my knees up at the table for a week
• *Be nice to Kimberly
• Run faster than Kimberly
• Have a good reputation
• Get very hyper each morning, so I shall be able to make wonderful friends
• Get the proper amount of sleep w/out napping

In 2001, I also set some long-term goals, like these:

• Receive my Young Woman of Recognition award. Check.
• Learn to play sax and piccolo. Check on the second one.
• Be in trevairs (Trouveres). Check.
• Have 3 different jobs. I met this requirement before I even graduated from high school. When I made the goal, though, having a job was like the scariest thing ever, so planning to have three different jobs in my lifetime probably felt like an ambitious goal at the time.
• Graduate from BYU or UVSC. Check.
• Get married in the temple. Not check.
• Be a mom. Not check.
• Write a book (and publish). Do my blog books count?
• Go see all the states (so far I have Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and California). It took me 13 years to add two more to the list: Washington D.C./Virginia and Nevada.

*I also made goals to be nice to Mom, Tiffany, and Tyrel, but believe it or not, I recognized my need to be nicer to Kimberly the most.*

My pre-30s bucket list

I've never been much of a dreamer. A planner, yes, but not a dreamer.

I am happy to report that that's starting to change. Grad school has broadened my horizon and opened up whole new worlds of opportunities and possibilities, and suddenly the 100 years of life I expect to have don't seem like nearly enough time to do all the things I want to do.

That's why I've decided to create a bucket list. Listing everything I want to do over the next 70 years is a bit overwhelming--perhaps that's why I've never done this before--so I am focusing on the things I want to do before I'm 30. The clock is ticking: only 4 1/2 years + 1 week to cross all these things off my list.

• Create my own homemade Ranch recipe that is as good as Brick Oven or BYU Ranch. I've been working on this one for a few years and I'm starting to get mad that I haven't discovered the secret yet.
• Give snow skiing a try. Or snowboarding.
• Learn and master Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on the piano. All 27 pages of it.
• Do at least one uncharacteristicly spontaneous thing, like skydiving or swimming with dolphins
• Travel outside the U.S. (yes, Canada counts)
• Visit at least two places in the U.S. I've never been to before
• Buy a house
• Buy a grand piano
• Get married
• Start a family
• Go to Harry Potter world 
• Become a more ambitious chef and create my own cookbook
• Publish an essay/article in a prestigious magazine
• Pay off student loans
• Create my own library and/or music room
• Get my master's degree
• Stay physically fit, i.e., be able to play basketball or ultimate Frisbee for longer than five minutes without wheezing
• Finish reading the entire Bible

Anything else I should add to my list?

The beauty of new years resolutions

I had only planned to make one new years resolution this year. The new years resolutions naysayers had finally gotten through to me and I felt silly thinking about resolutions when everyone says they are useless anyway. So I just picked a "theme" for the year and planned to center all my self-improvement efforts on my theme.

Then came January 2. The bustle, warmth, fun, boredom, and Kodak moments of the holidays come to a brutal end and, despite thinking I was ready for a healthy dose of reality, all I can see in front of me is months of bitter cold and sunless days, more of same from last year, and almost six months until my next vacation day.

That's not exactly the bright future I envisioned for 2013 from the other side of January 2.

So I made some resolutions, knowing full well that I will have forgotten about some of them by the end of February. But right now, that doesn't matter so much. The goals I make at the beginning of every year do more than help me improve various aspects of my life. They light up the dank months of January and February by reminding me of all the wonderful things I will accomplish that year, and give me hope that this year could be the best year of my life.

On January 2, I didn't have any grand plans for 2013. Now, however, I suspect that 2013 will be my year.

My 2012 resolution: Be uncomfortable

In the past, my New Years Resolutions from year to year have been much the same: be nicer to my siblings, do my jobs without Mom telling me to, work out more, save money, get good grades. I usually came up with a list of 15–20 things I wanted to "improve" on that I smugly hung up somewhere in my bedroom or shyly hid in my journal.

But this year I decided to approach the New Years Resolution thing a little bit differently. As much as I love crossing things off my to-do list, I thought it would be more effective to focus on being rather than doing. If you don't know the difference, read this conference talk. It rocks.

I couldn't resist making a few list-like resolutions, but I made one resolution that became my theme for the year: be uncomfortable.

My bishop is always encouraging us to put ourselves into situations where we will be uncomfortable. Go out on missionary visits. Say hi to a long-haired hooligan. Bear your testimony to your co-workers. He's told me a couple of times that there's nothing he loves more than being uncomfortable, as long as it doesn't kill him.

I don't share Bishop Ayre's enthusiasm about discomfort. I've done a pretty good job avoiding it up till now. So I took upon myself a real New Years challenge this year; one that would require real change, not one that I would probably do even if I didn't consciously decide to do it.

While I didn't seize as many opportunities as I could have to be uncomfortable (even Bishop Ayre agrees that there's a limit to the amount of discomfort you can handle), I launched myself into the realm of discomfort many a time. In summary:

• I went to several FHEs.
• I participated in my ward's co-ed softball team.
• I spoke in sacrament meeting.
• I asked my home teachers to give me a blessing.
• I made the best of my smoker's apartment.
• I moved out of my smoker's apartment.
• I worked out where people could see me.
• I decided to go to grad school.
• I survived my first semester of grad school.
• I voiced my opinions at work.
• I voiced my opinions at school.
• I asked more questions at work (and not just through email—I approached people for help more times than I care to remember).
• I shared a little bit more of myself on my blog.
• I talked to people at work a little more (though I still blush whenever anyone so much as looks at me).
• I performed a couple times with my mom and sisters.

Most of the time, being so uncomfortable made me all the more aware of my weaknesses. I spent a ridiculous amount of time dwelling on how much I hate going to social functions by myself and how much I dread casually swinging by someone's office to remind them to get their newsletter articles to me. Many of the hopes I harbored were dashed when my brief, adrenaline-filled bouts of discomfort failed to produce any short-term blessings.

But overall, being uncomfortable allowed me to confront my weaknesses and show them that they aren't the boss of me. Asking questions isn't so hard anymore. When people ask for my opinion on something, I can answer them without saying "I don't know about that—ask so-and-so." Others claim to have been blessed by my moments of discomfort, like my home teachers who came over to my apartment at 10:00 p.m. to give me a healing blessing, and the people who listened to me sing with my mom and sisters.

I didn't make this resolution because I wanted to check it off the list and be done with it. I made it because I hope being uncomfortable will become a bigger part of who I am. And I'm not done focusing on this theme—not by a long shot.