Intentions

I was going to call this post Good Intentions or Worthy Intentions or something equally lofty and pretentious. In the end, though, plain old Intentions is enough.

During the flurry of channel-hopping we did last night (I'm still astonished I stayed up until midnight – haven't rung in the new year since 2000!), I heard someone say that instead of resolutions, s/he made intentions. It worked better for that person, and I do believe it might work for me.

Setting reasonable, achievable goals for myself last year was just what I needed to do. I was clear about the goals and about the steps I would have to take to accomplish them. The weight-loss one, especially, was well-thought-out. When my plan (counting calories, eating healthfully, walking consistently) didn't produce results, I changed the plan. And lost the weight.

It's actually a little difficult to remember how I felt when I set the 1000-mile goal. I can't even find the post where I said that's what I wanted to do. I found several referring to it as I made progress. Whatever. I'm pretty sure I thought averaging three miles a day would be about all I could handle, taking into account some days off for travel and weather.

Fifteen hundred miles would mean averaging slightly more than four daily miles. I've been doing that consistently since June. Therefore, I intend to log 1500 miles for 2014. I'd like it very much if 500 of them were running miles, and I wouldn't mind at all if half the total mileage ended up being running. But – just this once! heh – I'll be conservative.

Right now, walking/running 1500 miles is my main intention for the coming year. I do intend to continue following a primal/paleo eating plan, and would like for 12 more pounds to disappear at some point. But I don't have the same confidence about losing weight I did last fall. I've been maintaining a 50-plus-pound loss for a couple months now, though, and I hope to see some progress as time goes by.

The blog is called Knit. Run. Reap. Eat. I have the running and eating covered. Tomorrow I'll set some intentions for using up some of the stash and for this year's garden. In the meantime, you'll find me parked in front of the television watching football most of the day.

After I walk.