A little more than a week into this challenge, you're probably wondering where I am standing with respect to my goals.  Here's where I am...

Work up to running 30 miles per week	40 minute long run this week
Lose 30 pounds	152.4 to 149.6
Complete 30 push-ups (not girly style) in one workout	I need to get started with some strength work.
Eat 30 servings of fruits and vegetables per week	Completed for this week (37!)
Complete 30 intentional acts of kindness toward my husband	2
A 30 mile bike ride	No progress
Have 30 days with at least 60 minutes spent outside	4
Pare clothing down to fewer than 30 articles (including underwear, not including socks)	No progress
30 minutes of seated, silent meditation per week	Not started yet.
30 day streak of exercising at least 30 minutes per day	4 days in a row
Impulse purchases limited to less than $30 per trip	Yep
Take 30 lunch breaks	2
Make 30 phone calls or send emails to family and friends	2
Complete 30 random acts of kindness	0
Plant 30 things around my home	0
Attend 30 community events	4
Visit 30 countries without leaving Ohio	Next weekend this will begin!
30 days of sex	None of your business ;-)
Read 30 books	5
Spend 30 minutes per week on professional development activities	Done
Make 30 home-cooked meals	4
Learn to say "hello," "goodbye," "please" and "thank you" in 30 languages	(in my own, understandable only to me phonetics...) Bonjour, Au Revoir, Sil vous plait, Merci. Yiasou, Andio, Parakahloh, efharisto
Spend 30 minutes a week cleaning things I wouldn't normally around the house	Yes
Spend less than 30 minutes per day on internet fluff	No
Read 30 poems	0
Travel 30 miles on foot in one day	Nope.  Just 4.
Speak up for myself 30 times	2
30 days in a row with no pop (Cherry Coke Zero, this one's for you...)	4 day streak
Have 30 fully productive days at work	3
Pack lunch for 30 days	1

Physics 101

Intertia is a powerful force.  When I learned about it in high school physics, I never suspected I would be using the term over and over again to describe how I live my life on a daily basis.  For those of you who don't remember high school physics, inertia is a property of matter by which it continues in its original state of motion until disrupted by an outside force.  That's me, in a nutshell.  If I'm sitting on the couch, reading a book, generally I won't get up until the book is done or it's bedtime.  It doesn't matter that it's beautiful outside or it's raining just enough to make for a perfect run, I'm a body at rest and I'm going to stay at rest.  Once I'm outside, moving around, I'm usually pretty good and pretty happy, and will usually stay outside until I get too cold, too hot or too bug-bitten, but overcoming that initial impulse to stay nestled into my comfy couch is tough.  Anyone else fight with inertia regularly?

Life 101

I sometimes feel like I missed out on important lessons while growing up.  Some are pretty trivial, like how to apply makeup well and the importance of pre-treating stains on clothing.   Others, like how to keep a clean house and perform regular maintenance on your car, would be nice to have as established habits.  And still others, like how to set and reach goals and how not to care what people think of you, are things that are really missing. When I was a kid, I assumed that there was this magical age you reached where you would automatically know how to do these kind of things and you would just do them automatically.  If this age exists (and I'm starting to doubt it), I'm certainly not anywhere near it yet.

I find myself frequently stressed by the idea that people may be coming over and the dishes aren't anywhere near done and the floor needs swept and I have a stain on my pants and my entree is served cold but I don't want to send it back because the server is busy.

Intellectually, I know that this is silly.  I'm not being thought less of because I have dust bunnies running around with my real bunny and the restaurant screwed up their timing and I want to eat a hot dinner.  And if I am, who cares?  I frequently counsel the kids I work with to ignore those who aren't kind to them, who are judgemental, who treat them poorly.  I teach assertive communication and healthy boundaries and activities of daily living day-in and day-out.  I wonder what the kiddos would think if they knew I have never sent back a dish at a restaurant and I accept the stock answer, no matter how unhelpful, anytime I deal with customer service.  Hell...I got eaten alive by bedbugs last time I flew and, after receiving an unhelpful response via phone, all I did was write an email to the US Airways customer service e-box asking them to please check the plane so others don't have to go through the same experience.

Emotionally, I feel like I am not a normal, fully-functioning adult who is able to do all of these things.  All my friends can and do send food back if it's not to their liking, or stay on the phone with customer service to get their issues resolved.  They know how to apply makeup and keep their houses clean and all of that other stuff I don't.  What makes me different from them?  Why is it I can't just do the things I tell my kiddos to do.  Try sending a meal back.  Look, the world doesn't end!  Don't worry about your floor, who's looking under the couch anyways?  Stick up for yourself sometimes.  You deserve it just as much as anyone else.

With all the school I've been through and all the experiences I've sought, I feel like I missed out on the "Life 101" classes.

Day One

I am counting Day 1 of my journey a success.

I ate 6 servings of fruits and vegetables, ran, spent 60 minutes outside in the glorious sunshine, called my grandmother, cooked dinner, had a fully productive day at work and was intentionally kind toward my husband.  I also drank a bottle of pop and spent way more than 30 minutes wasting time on the internet.

Normally, when I set a goal for myself and then slip up, I tend to give up.  I generalize the failure and decide that if I can't do it, I might as well not try.  That's happened in the past with running, eating healthily, journaling, meditation and more other attempts than I can count.  Not only do I stop working on my original goal, but I frequently swing in the entire other direction.  When I make a poor choice of food after I've set out to eat healthily, I go all out and wind up like I did the other day, eating 6 packages of TastyKake Coffeecake Cream Cupcakes.  If I'm not going to run, you better believe I'm going to be sitting on the couch doing nothing active at all.  Naturally, this spiral winds up with me at the bottom, surrounded with cupcake wrappers, wondering what in the world happened to the reasonably intelligent, productive and well-adjusted human being I can pretend to be a majority of the time.  Then I make another goal and start another cycle.

This isn't to say there haven't been times where I have successfully completed goals, of course.  For better than the course of a year I either ran or went to the gym nearly every day, learning to lift weights and run long distances and enjoying the activities in the process.  I was healthy.  I was strong.  I was proud.  I completed numerous goals I set out for myself and was immensely proud of having done so.  I ran a half marathon faster than I dreamed I could.  I lifted my body weight over my head.  I lost 25 pounds and wore a smaller size of clothes than I ever had since puberty.  I was eating well, doing well and living well.  Then, something changed and I stopped doing all of those things.

Now when I don't reach a goal, the failure feels even more acute. I had been successful, had managed to achieve what I set out to do, and done so with great aplomb.  Instead of repeating the process, however, I'm eating cupcakes, bemoaning my increasingly larger pant size. This is the motivation behind the next four months.

I am giving myself permission to not be perfect, to have a cupcake if I want to, to fail sometimes.  Nowhere in my goals is one that says I have to do everything exactly right for the next 120 days.  I have permission to embrace or reject the challenges on a daily basis and work to include them in small doses, to make new habits that I can sustain for the forseeable future.  This will be the ultimate outcome of this challenge.

And so it begins

Starting tomorrow, I will be embarking on a journey to challenge myself in the next four months leading up to my 30th birthday.  I have created a list of 30 different thirties I will accomplish by December 1st, 2013. The goals run the gamut of topics and should make for a busy, but fulfilling next four months.  Some will be easy, some not so much.  Some will be fun, others not so much.  Some are deeply personal, others completely frivolous.  All will help me learn more about myself and contribute to the development of the person I aim to be.  I invite you to share in my journey, or perhaps to create your own.

The List

1. Work up to running 30 miles per week
2. Lose 30 pounds
3. Complete 30 push-ups (not girly style) in one workout
4. Eat 30 servings of fruits and vegetables per week
5. Complete 30 intentional acts of kindness toward my husband
6. A 30 mile bike ride
7. Have 30 days with at least 60 minutes spent outside
8. Pare clothing down to fewer than 30 articles (including underwear, not including socks)
9. 30 minutes of seated, silent meditation per week
10. 30 day streak of exercising at least 30 minutes per day
11. Impulse purchases limited to less than $30 per trip
12. Take 30 lunch breaks
13. Make 30 phone calls or send emails to family and friends
14. Complete 30 random acts of kindness
15. Plant 30 things around my home
16. Attend 30 community events
17. Visit 30 countries without leaving Ohio
18. 30 days of sex
19. Read 30 books
20. Spend 30 minutes per week on professional development activities
21. Make 30 home-cooked meals
22. Learn to say "hello," "goodbye," "please" and "thank you" in 30 languages
23. Spend 30 minutes a week cleaning things I wouldn't normally around the house
24. Spend less than 30 minutes per day on internet fluff
25. Read 30 poems
26. Travel 30 miles on foot in one day
27. Speak up for myself 30 times
28. 30 days in a row with no pop (Cherry Coke Zero, this one's for you...)
29. Have 30 fully productive days at work
30. Pack lunch for 30 days