Summer Time

And the living's busy. Now that I've graduated, and moved out of my home of three years (miss you Dykstra!), it's time to start focusing on the future. I still have 2 classes to finish up with, and I'm living on campus until September, so this summer is going to serve as a kind of transitional period for me. I think that'll be good though, and I'm excited for it. I have three main goals for this summer, and ideally, these will carry on into my "adult life" after the summer:

1. Reduce Clutter - As I discovered in the moving process on Sunday, I have a LOT of stuff. I definitely don't need it all, so I'm going to make an effort to reduce that significantly, and better organize the stuff I do keep. This applies not only to physical stuff, but digital stuff - cleaning out & organizing photos and such. I need to do a good job of this on the stuff I already have, and then make sure I maintain it as I acquire new stuff (by actually getting rid of stuff when I get new things).

2. Live Healthier - This is an intentionally broad category. It's not enough to just eat better (and I already eat farily well for the most part). I could become obsessed with counting calories, and becoming a slave to nutrition fact sheets, but that kind of obsession isn't very healthy mentally or emotionally. This is a total lifestyle goal - eat better, exercise more regularly, and keep myself mentally and emotionally fresh. The first two are easier to figure out how to do, but the third is going to be tougher. Hopefully, not having a 24-hour responsibility for over 100 people will help me get some more "me time". As for how I'll use that time...

3. Embrace/Engage Arts - I'm not a very skilled artist/writer/musician/etc, and this is something I came to terms with long ago. That said, I still enjoy to at least experiment with them, and engage myself in artistic endeavors. I hope to use some of my extra time to focus on things of this nature, and I'm hoping it'll prove helpful in regards to point #2.

Last summer, I found it very relaxing to just write short stories as they came to me, the result of which is One-Eyed Cowboy (also featuring a drawing of mine). I hope to add to that some more, and work on some drawings/paintings to add to my Flickr. I'm also already planning some photo days with Ben, which will hopefully result in some nice photography stuff. The one other thing I did was have my parents bring my keyboard up, so hopefully I can learn some basics and songs. And if I get inspired to work on non-artsy projects, I'm going to do those as well.

The important thing is that I'm not going to FORCE any of this; I want to go for it when inspiration strikes, and just enjoy it. Becoming obsessed with doing something just for the sake of doing it isn't going to help with my healthier lifestyle goal.

Separate from these goals (though I guess tangentially related), I'm going to update this blog more. I kind of fell off for a bit, with school, work, friends, and everything else. This blog has always been written primarily for me, so I don't feel bad about lack of updates, but I hope that more regular updates becomes part of everything going forward. As I work on (and hit) some of the above goals, I'll definitely have stuff to talk about.

Happy summer everybody!