Truth-i-ness (and alot of bla bla bla)

If you caught the Steven Colbert referrence in the title, than you just made me love you a little more.

Today I am feeling a little introverted and philosophical.  So are you ready for some random philoso-phizing?

As some of you may or may not know, in college I majored in Theater (since that was my college scholoraship), but also pursued my degree in Psychology.  Now first let me say that I love theater.  It is my passion, and the only constant love affair I have had throughout my life (i haven't known matt all my life so this is no fault of his :).   If I could do nothing but act my whole life I would, it is a deep rooted passion that I will have until the day I die and probably beyond that to be truthful. 

But when I was in college, being of a practical mind, I decided to look for other things/majors/occupations that might captivate me.  For the most part this failed.  Big time.  Oh, I was a good student.  Toot, toot (that was me tooting my own horn), I graduated with honors.  But I didn't really find anything else that I loved even slightly close to the way I did the stage (the story of my life).  But then I took a psych 101 class and loved it, so I took another level of psych and another and another, until I decided to double major and pursue both degrees.  I loved it.  Not the way I love theater, but WAY more than anything else I have ever studied. I find it stimulating and fascinating.

Now I graduated in the Spring of 2004 (wow, almost 6 years ago, holy crap I am old), so it has been a while since I have been in college (at least on a full time basis. I did some choir, etc after I graduated while I was working and putting Matt through school).  But I still love Psychology.  So sometimes I find myself reading studies, looking at statistics, and pulling out an old textbook or two.  One day when matt is done with his anesthetist degree I am planning on going to Grad school, in pursuit of becoming a psycologist.

So that was the "brief" background I decided that I wanted to give before talking about my real point.  I tell you what, I just can NOT tell a short story!  Geez!

I was reading an article about a study that was done on the link between internet usage and depression.  The stats show that there is a positive corelation between internet usage and depression, which means that the more time you spend on-line generally, the more depressed you are.  They are of course now looking into whether internet usage causes depression or whether depressed people are more drawn to lengthy internet usage.  The cause and effect aren't really important to me, it just made me take a look at my life. 

I actually don't really spend very much time a day on-line, but I do play some games on our computer and sometimes bust out the playstation.  I also LOVE to read.  I am a total junkie, and can get lost in a novel for hours.  I will freely admit that I am a victim of stimulating, unproductive entertainment that accomplishes nothing, but is fun in the moment.  I think that a big problem for Americans is that we aren't acutaly living our lives.  Ya know? 

In my Social Psych class I had to write a research paper and my basic thesis was that establishing and accomplishing goals increases self esteem.  And I really believe that the best way to get some self esteem for yourself is to set some goals, work hard and accomplish them.  Don't you feel better about your day (and yourself) if you have a list of things you need to do and you actually DO them?  I know that I do.  I am not talking about just long-term goals, or just daily to do lists, I mean a combination of them both.

Every year at the end of the year, we have a "Jesus Stocking" that hangs with our stockings during Christmas Time.  On Christmas Eve we all write on slips of paper (they are private no one reads anyone else's) goals (like new year's resolutions), ways that we are going to try an improve ourselves throughout the coming year.  We read last year's and then put in the new ones as our gifts to Christ for Christmas.

I clearly won't tell you all the things I wrote down, but some of them had to do with being more productive (and hopefully in return upping my self esteem a little bit). 
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I'll be honest (after all the title of the post is "Truthiness"), since I had Lily my self esteem hasn't been very good. When she was 2 months old I quit my job and we moved away from my friends and family and Matt started work.  It was rough.  I was carrying around a bunch of extra weight, I was tired, lonley and depressed.  All my social identifiers were suddenly gone.  I was no longer working, doing choir or theater, I had no family or friends that I was close with.  I was a stay at home mom with a new (and very difficult baby), and no life outside the walls of my apartment.

Since then things have gotten alot better, and in general, I am happy.  Very happy actually.  But I still have a bit of laziness and am prone to mind numbing entertainment.  I feel wonderful about my family and the love that we have, and I have so much to be grateful for.  But I still struggle with my self image, and the changes in me that have gradually happened that I don't like.  I used to be SO active and overly busy, now I am just tired and worn out.  So this year, I am working on fixing that, from the inside out.  I am going to focus on being a better and more active mom and house wife.  Strive to do more cooking, cleaning and quality family time.  Especially because this year is going to be hard on Matt.  I don't want him to have to do much of anything around here.  I also want to be able to look around and be able to see my daily accomplishments (ie, that is right there are NO dishes in the sink, or everything is picked up, I excersied, made dinner, etc).

And I really believe that accomplishing things and showing myself that I have the ability to be dissatified and decide to change, and accomplish those changes, will make me feel better about myself.  I could crash diet and lose the 15 lbs, but I would still feel lazy and dissatisfied with who I am.  This year I am going to try harder to reach my potential on all  the levels.

What about you?  What are your goals this year? :)