A Look Back Going Forward

As most readers noticed months ago, 2013 was an epic fail for me in regards to my goals for the year.  I've never had a year in which my set goals went so awry.

I always end my "goal posts" with the letters D.V., which stand for Deo Volente, or "God willing".  Last year, He wasn't, for the most part.

Unbelievably, Deo Volente is the motto of one of my Alma Maters, SIU Carbondale.  How long before the nuts in IL make them change that?

But I digress.  For the first time in 2014.

The only goal I was able to complete was reading the Apocrypha.  Which was nice.  I had always wanted to get that done.

But the rest of the goals were out of reach by summer.  Not to make excuses, but I did have an excuse.

I did very well with my exercise goals until I hurt my shoulder. 

I think the addition of pull ups proved too much too quick.  I "got greedy" and started doing a lot more than I originally had planned for.

I also did not have enough rest in between work outs.  The first month or so I did pull  ups almost every day, then went to every other day.  That was way too much.  Since I was adding this to my repertoire, I should have had a lot more days of rest in between.

So it was a combination of too many reps too quickly with too little rest.

Add to all that the fact I turned 50 last year.  That probably didn't help, either.

Boy, there is way too much yellow at the Outback Bowl.  Yellow pants for LSU and Iowa, yellow endzones, yellow walls, yellow field outlines.  Whoa.

But I digress.  For the second time in 2014.

By May, I could hardly move my shoulder anymore and had to quit pull ups as well as my push ups.  I slowly improved (if anyone has ever had a shoulder problem, you know it takes a long time to recover).

So even though I was well ahead of schedule for my goals at that time, I could not go on any farther.  Too much hare, not enough tortoise, I guess.

By the way, Torty, Allen Craig's pet tortoise, is still twitting. 

But I digress again.  That makes 3 digressions already this year.

I am now about 95% recovered, and ready to start again.  I will hopefully be wiser this year.

Okay, no snickers from the peanut gallery.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"


Needless to say, because of my shoulder, I wasn't able to get 50 non-stop push ups on my 50th birthday.  So another goal not met.

More relevant to this blog, I didn't get to 300 posts.

I could have.  This blog was at 105 by the end of April.  But at the same time my shoulder went out, I was done with posting also.  Probably out of discouragement, knowing I wasn't going to reach my exercise goals, I stopped trying for my other goals as well.

For the year, I finished with 123 posts.  Not bad, but nowhere near my goal.

And I didn't get the patio done at home.

If you're keeping score, that means 1 success, with 4 failures.

Which brings me to this year.  I'm optimistic, because I'm being more realistic.  Meaning I've lowered my goals for the year.

No sense setting myself up for failure, especially coming off of injury.

We're going back to reading the Bible, ESV again.  Only my goal is not to get through the Bible this year, but merely read a chapter a day.  That should allow for more in-depth study.

We may add the  Book of Concord, we'll see.  But I can't decide between Tappert and Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions.

For exercise, I'm going only for 20,000 push ups, roughly 400 a week.  I'm not setting a pull up goal, because my shoulder concerns have not allowed me to attempt any at this point.

I am shooting for 25,000 squats again.

In regards to this blog, I am going for a more modest 200 posts.  I last did that in 2011.

Lastly, I'll try not to digress too much in 2014. 

But I digress.

D.V.