The Plan!

Thanks to Katie for the format and inspiration!

Here's my rough draft (advice and suggestions welcomed!):

1. Health
Katie's first step was scheduling a physical. I think they're an American thing, because I've never had one. Should I?
Things I will work towards include:

• eating breakfast
• bringing my lunch from home so I don't just eat pizza every day (the cafeteria sucks at vegetarian options)
• cooking dinner (I have been better about this, but I'd also like to get back to using real ingredients instead of just jars of sauce plus frozen veges)
• eating when I'm hungry, not just bored/sad
  
• going to bed before midnight (so that I can get up in time to eat breakfast)
• going to the gym
  

I'm not expecting to start doing all those things every day immediately, but I'd like to keep getting closer.
This city has apparently decided to help me get more exercise, too, since they got rid of the unlimited monthly transport pass I used to use and put the prices up enough that now I'm not sure I can justify the expense for a lot of short trips, when it would take very little extra time to walk.

2. Professional
I would like to will write a paper and submit it this year. That should be possible. It should have been possible last year, if I hadn't slacked off so much, and if I hadn't discovered huge problems with my assay.
Katie said she was going to make a colour-coded time line! That sounds fun; I think I'll do that too.
Here's the (very vague) general plan, though:

• stage 1: finish optimising the assay conditions, repeat the big set of experiments, analyse data
• stage 2: make/find the new reagents I need, use them
• stage 3: in vivo stuff
  
• side project 1: help SuperPostDoc (and hopefully get my name on that paper, too)
• side project 2: help Swedish PostDoc figure out assay conditions for his experiments, and get him to help me figure out conditions for mine
• reading: read table of contents every week and set up pubmed alerts

I'll also work on getting to lab before 10am every day and increasing the amount of time I spend actually working while I'm there. I changed my Joe's goals so that I get points for every half hour of work, so that I can break the day up into blocks like that. Maybe I should get a timer so that I can keep track, too (plus buying organisational stuff is fun :) ). I will also write in my lab book when I do experiments instead of piling up scraps of paper with illegible dilution calculations and notes on them.

3. Social
This one needs a lot of work. The big thing for now is I think I've decided to try the social phobia program that I looked into ages ago and the therapist suggested.
I would also like to keep in contact with friends better. I'm going to try emailing everyone from home once a fortnight, at least, and seeing a few different friends here once a month (that doesn't sound like much, but it's more than I've been doing).
Not hiding in my room would also be good.
Aside from that, I'd love some advice. How can I meet new people to be friends with, or how can I turn existing acquaintances into friends? Occasionally I look at classes that would be fun to take, or maybe I could look into finding a choir to join again, but I'm not usually any good at making friends that way.
Maybe I'll think about doing some of the self-esteem book exercises.
Oh, doing my chores on time would probably help things with my housemates, too.
I'll try to have lunch with labmates occasionally, too.

4. Family
I'm not sure what I want in terms of relationships with my family. Maybe that's something to work out as part of the plan.
In the mean time, I will call my mum every week and email the rest of my family every fortnight as well. I should also log on to skype occasionally.

5. Being Selfish
I've thought about volunteering to tutor kids or something before, but I've been too lazy and avoidant to do anything about it. One of my housemates volunteers for the Samaritans, too, and is always suggesting I could do that, because they need people. Is it a good or bad idea to try to listen to people who need help when I need help myself? Not being able to talk could also be a problem, but I'm given to understand that the less volunteers say the better.
I'm going to make an appointment to donate platelets this week, too. I've been avoiding it, because the needles they use here are bigger than the ones at home and actually kind of hurt. I keep getting letters asking me to donate, though, because I'm CMV-free (possibly due to my lack of sociability :) ), or at least, I was a year ago.

6. Other
I want to play the piano again and I think I'll try again with project 365, which kind of fell by the wayside after I hid in my room with nothing to take photos of for a couple of days. I also want to finish my mittens and maybe knit this cute hat and scarf*.

What Now also posted about Steve Pavlina's idea of having an area of primary focus for the year, which I like. I think my area of primary focus needs to be friendship**, but I'll keep the other areas of The Plan, too.

I find Steve Pavlina irritating fairly often, but this is another interesting post that fits with the idea of improving my scores: How to Get From a 7 to a 10

StyleyGeek also mentioned his method for becoming an early riser, which I think I'm going to try. At least, for 30 days, I'm going to get up at 7.10am and go to the gym. I did it this morning and it wasn't too hard, although I have been yawning all day and I should've gone to sleep earlier tonight. For now, I'm telling myself I can sleep in on February 2nd, but hopefully by then it will be more of a habit.

I'm a little worried that this is all too much to work on at once. I don't want to get overwhelmed and discouraged once my initial enthusiasm wears off. At the same time, it feels like a lot of things are connected, so it might help to work on different aspects at once. Hopefully I can keep my focus on just improving, rather than doing all this stuff perfectly right away.

So far today, I've done pretty well at the health things*** (although, it is after midnight and I'm still writing). Lab work is progressing very slowly, but progressing, at least. I need to work on being able to do something productive with the time between experiments. I haven't really started any of the others yet. I'll report back in a month (or possibly earlier). Wish me luck!



*I may be insane to think I can knit them, since the mittens are the first thing I've ever knit, but they have turned out pretty well so far, and they're actually rated on the knitty site as harder than the hat/scarf. Also, I don't like the yellowy-green colour at all, so any suggestions for a better colour scheme?

**It's scary even to just say that, because I know changes are going to be hard and cause a lot of anxiety in the short term. Plus, even the potential long-term benefits are scary because they're new and uncharted territory. I can't have actual close friends! I don't know how to do that! Maybe such a big focus isn't a good idea. It might help to break it down into small, specific, less scary pieces, if I could figure out what they could be.

***Bonus piece of encouragement: I weighed myself at the gym this morning. I hadn't done that since I stopped going over 2 years ago, but somehow I was only 4lb over the lowest weight I reached after 3 months of dieting and exercise (and 4lb less than when I stopped going). I have no idea how the heck that happened, but I'm not complaining.