New Year

"Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past.

Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go."

-Mark Twain

It's time to take stock of the goals I set for myself 4 months ago - let's see how I've done:

1. Lose 10 pounds. (Nope - now it's more like 20)
2. Get and maintain a tan. Check!
3. Travel around the world to England, India and Japan. Check!
4. Get published in a magazine under my own byline (ghostwriting doesn’t count). (Still working on it)
5. Become a journalist.  (Nope)

So, 2/5 is a great start. Unfortunately, those were the easy two.

Today, January  4th 2010, I started my New Years Resolution diet and fitness regimen. I woke up later than I intended to, but I went to the gym for 30 minutes as planned, ate part of a mango, carrots, broccoli and hummus for breakfast and lunch, and will be walking 2 miles to the grocery store and back to get salad ingredients for dinner. Today is the first day of succeeding at goal #1 - which has been amended to losing 20 pounds, especially after a certain Wii Fit called me fat to my face, in front of my boyfriend's parents, and boyfriend. I wanted to smash it while screaming more than a few choice words, but showing that much of a temper would have only damned me more in their eyes. Better to be fat and peaceful than obese and violently angry - but dear God how I hate the Wii Fit.

Anyways - let me take a deep calming breath - ok.  My next New Year's Resolution is to pick a day every month to pitch to Westways Magazine. It is my goal to pitch to them until they accept. I have all the tools: I know who to send pitches to, I know their magazine cover to cover, and I am so on top of the kind of stories they publish that I have been scooped in every single edition for the past 6 months. Those are 6 pitches I should have sent. It's great to know I'm on the right track, but at this point I'm just kicking myself for not acting.

As for becoming a journalist - I'm too busy to even think of it right now. I need to take a class in Multimedia that I can't afford, and I have a ton of writing to do for pay this month, so that one is going to have to wait a while. But I am enjoying the life of a freelance writer. Loving it, actually.