New Year's Resolutions

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves, we must die to one life before we can enter another.” –Anatole France

‘Tis the season for resolutions and new beginnings. I love beginnings. I love the excitement of starting fresh, of new ideas, daydreams, hopes and wishes. I have a lot of expectations for 2012, all of which I hope will come to fruition, but only a few of which I would like to list as my official New Year’s Resolutions.

As a diabetic, of course the first resolution I would like to make is regarding my blood sugar control. My HAICs have been consistently around 7 mmol/g in recent years, and my goal this year is to have an A1C of 5.8mmol/g before the end of 2012. But as any good diabetic knows, blood sugar control cannot be measured simply with an average, as an average can never truly tell the full story.  If I achieve that average through a rollercoaster of blood sugars that’s as crazy as this:

than it is not a fair representation of my blood sugar control. I’d like my blood sugar control to be quite a bit more boring and a lot flatter, probably something like this:

My second resolution is to prevent myself from taking on too many committments (work, volunteering, schooling), and by doing so, allowing myself the opportunity to truly give myself 100% to the commitments that I do make. I have the tendency to take on more than is healthy- in terms of levels of stress- (ahem the 4 jobs I was working plus full time school last semester) and I’ve found this to be not only unhealthy, but unsatisfying too.  I wouldn’t call myself a perfectionist, but I do take a lot of pride in what I do, and I get very frustrated whenever I’m time crunched and forced to do a mediocre job. So this resolution is designed to hopefully allow me the opportunity to excel at and enjoy everything I do this year.

A third resolution I would like to make for myself, and one which is quite easily measurable by the public at large, is to truly keep up with blogging once a week. There are so many benefits of weekly blogs, from developing a stronger online community to expressing myself in times of excitement and frustration, and I do believe that the act of blogging itself helps me maintain better blood sugar control, simply by being a constant reminder of my diabetes. 

My fourth resolution is simple yet difficult all in one, and it is to smile more. Cheesy? Yes. Difficult to measure? Certainly. Important? Immeasurably.  Many people describe me as a very upbeat, smiley person, but I want every smile to be from the inside out. I remember a quote I once read in a running magazine, “Wellness is the key to a long and healthy life. Many people have the wrong perception of it. Wellness is from the neck up, and fitness from the neck down. Too many people work out every day, but go around with the worst attitudes, which just wastes all their physical efforts.” I think that statement captures the importance of attitude and happiness, and I would like to be a more smiley, positive person this year.

My final resolution fits in nicely with these ideas of wellness and fitness. I’d like to run in more races this year. So far I’ve signed up for the Warrior Dash in July, which I’m extremely excited about, and as the warmer months near I’d like to sign up for some more 5 and 10ks, possibly even a half marathon.

Here’s to hoping the new year brings all sorts of good, and fewer sorts of bad.