I have a 4 year plan…

For Ninjutsu, at least.

My Ninjutsu instructor decided that it was time to set up a calendar of when we would pass which rank.  A classmate and I, who are at the same level, were told that she expects us to have our Shodan (1st Dan Black Belt) by February 2013.

Um… we’ll see.  I hope to be able to do it (barring anything that might prevent me from training, whether illness, surgery, injury or pregnancy, who knows?).

New calendar year… time to set goals.

I am setting some goals, mostly lifestyle-related, for 2010:

Exercise More and Regularly:

I walk home from the train station daily (except Tuesdays, when I have Ninjutsu, so I think I can skip the walking home on Tuesdays, as well as the Fridays where I take the bus out to Valleyfield to go visit my parents), that’s about 20 to 25 minutes’ walk at least three times a week.  I also need to start doing sit ups and push ups regularly.  I’m thinking of making myself a program, actually, and maybe even getting up early so that I can do even more walking in the morning.  Possibly a gradual walk to run progression, even.

Progress to a Vegetarian Diet:

Starting this week, I will not eat meat from dinnertime on Sundays until lunch on Fridays, inclusively.  I plan on being lacto-ovo vegetarian full-time by my next birthday.  My parents are forewarned that starting in June, I will start avoiding meat on weekends, but by removing meat meals gradually.  I might also avoid meat at breakfast at all times starting now.  Bacon, how I’ll miss you!

Daily Spiritual Practice:

Both of the above have been goals for the past couple of years, but this one, I’ve kept on failing at for years and years now.  I really want to start a daily practice, and it needs to start NOW.  I have my First Degree, and I should have no excuse for not practicing daily.  If I ever want to start teaching and gain my Second, I have to mature and I can only mature spiritually by practicing.  There is no way around that.

Take Better Care of Myself and My Home:

I am a poor housekeeper.  The fact that I live alone and am usually the one who is invited over to friends’ homes for dinner is not helping.  I’d love to have friends over and cook tasty and healthy dishes for them, even though my TV is tiny, I only have one computer (so no massive, 4 people in the same room, WOW gaming at my place, but other things CAN be done!!!), and no sound system.  Board games can be brought along to play, same with card games, and, though my TV is tiny, one can still enjoy movies or TV on it!  So I need to start keeping my home in top shape.  Also, I shower daily, but I don’t give myself pedicures, lotion my skin (my legs are dreadful at the moment, skin all scaly and dry), wear much makeup or anything of the sort regularly.  I need to start pampering myself.  I can surf the web while waiting for a hair treatment to have its effect, or watch True Blood episodes while soaking my cuticles before pushing them back.

These are my goals for this year.  Not resolutions, goals.  And the rewards for reaching those goals are going to be better health, a deeper spirituality, and more quality time with my friends.  All good, fun stuff.  I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Changes…

I have made a few decisions concerning my life for 2009, onwards:

I am still working towards becoming at least lacto-ovo vegetarian, and hope to finalize the transition entirely by my next birthday in Agust.

I want to be more serious about doing my spiritual practices on a daily basis.

I want to exercise more and better, both for fitness and regarding Ninjutsu.

I want to start learning a third language.  That’s right, I’m already bilingual, French is my mother tongue, and English, my second language.  I used to study Japanese on my own, but the tools available to me in the late 1990s made it hard to study on one’s own.  Now there are free podcasts and vodcasts available for download, and they seem legit from what I remember of the language.  I don’t know yet how I’ll manage to learn to write it (I used to be able to read it phonetically, if furigana were provided for the kanji pronounciations, though I didn’t necessarily understand what I was making out), but that will have to be seen.  Maybe I’ll pay for actual lessons at a university or college, eventually, if I really get into it and want to learn further.  But I’d be happy to just learn to speak and understand it.

Clean Slate!

I realized this week, that this blog had no direction, from its start.

So I decided to start over.  Yes, on the same space.

I want to write about my own experiences, but also about the things I’m learning.  I want to write about how I’m integrating my spirituality in my day-to-day life.  I want to write about how I’ve decided to wean myself off meat and exercise more (a sane mind/soul in a sane body), and how it affects my life, both on the mundane and spiritual levels.

I had been stagnating on several aspects of my life, recently, to the point where the oh-so-familiar feeling of depression started rearing its ugly head again.  I’ve had enough of that!  I banish it from my life.

May Brighid’s flame strengthen us all.

Bright Blessings.