cassy_g | On Being Well and Some Future Goals

I am not going to say I am feeling better. Every time I do, the universe conspires to do something nasty to me. :) But I am finally not sick any more (I think).

Yesterday was the first meeting for Dragon*Con 2006, which is incidentally the 20th anniversary of Dragon*Con. Things went well I believe. As usual, I have so much work to do this week it's frightening. Thankfully, it looks like I can work from the house this week, so I won't be making the Commute from Hell(tm).

Being sick gave me some time for reflection between the mind-numbing pain, and as a result I have set some goals for myself for this year (though they aren't really on a time limit). In no particular order:

Become healthier and more fit (this doesn't necessarily involve losing weight, but that may well happen as a result of becoming more fit). I have set up a work out schedule from the classes offered at the LA Fitness near me, and plan on posting it and other health/fitness information in my LJ cassy_fitness once more. I fell out of my good habits of excercising and eating properly back around Dragon*Con, and I plan on correcting that.

Become more independent, both financially and personally. This is really more of a financial thing than a personal one since I do enjoy a great deal of personal independence. I think mainly I liked very much when I was the only person I had to depend on, and I want it to be like that again. I am not really sure how I am going to accomplish this at the moment, if it will be me getting a second job, or just applying myself more towards having a steady freelance income, but it's on the list of things to work out.

Become more literate in both Japanese and Chinese. Just because I can't afford to go to college this semester is no reason for me not to work on learning things. Everything I have ever learned that was worthwhile I taught myself. I just seem to learn better by getting my hands on things and tinkering with them to learn the ends and outs. I picked up a couple of books and CDs last week on both, though I have to admit that Chinese is proving to be more difficult to me than Japanese. Not the written words, but the spoken ones. I am not sure if it is because I have had more exposure to Japanese than Chinese, or if it is because Chinese is just that much more complicated. (And it is more complicated, every spoken word has 5 different ways of pronoucing it that utterly changes the meaning. And I don't mean like, to, too, and two. I mean you could say "ma" and it would mean "question mark" or you could say "má" and it would mean "mother" or "mà" and it would mean "to scold", you get the idea.) In any case, I am finding the study of them both to be utterly fascinating. I should mention I am studying the Putonghua form of Chinese which literally means "the common dialect", and is often refered to in the States as Mandarin.

Become less reclusive. This doesn't really mean I plan on becoming a social butterfly or anything, what it does mean is that I plan on making more of an effort to spend time with, or at least stay in contact with the people I care about. I have come to realize that while I care about people, I tend to keep a safety net even between me and the people I consider myself to be closest with. This too is something I will be trying to change.