The Best Laid Plans…

I am at my personal best when coming up with a plan and implementing it. I’m where I’m at today because I can come up with a grand plan and carry it out well. A little over a decade ago, I realized I was rather unhappy with the trajectory of my life. Something – many things - needed to change

After more than a bit of soul searching, long conversations with friends and family, and a bit of research I came up with a 7-year plan to set a new course for my future. I set firm and achievable goals. I took an honest assessment of my attributes and built them up whilst simultaneously working to address those things holding me back. My plan was incremental with benchmarks along the way, but also with the flexibility to not lock me into something that wasn’t working.

And 7 years later, I not only achieved everything I set out for but also managed to find the love of my life. Although it would be another few years before I found my current job, I was already well on the road to getting here.

Which brings me to the present day. The previous kind of radical changes are gone for the time being – it’s hard to make such changes when you have others to consider. RR and NJ are just too important to me. Now is the time in my life to build up a sturdy foundation and, to a certain extent, prepare for what comes next. This means there are a few differences. First, it’s not just me working towards these goals – RR’s help and support allow us reach our goals more quickly. The second difference, the timeframe is much shorter. Although we should know where we’ll be spending 2016-18 sometime early next summer (weird, huh!), our hope is to leave Guangzhou with two main personal goals accomplished.

Our number one goal is to solidify our financial foundation. A few years ago RR & I taught a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace course through my church. The course advocates a fairly straightforward course of action:

Give back – Give back to your community, specifically your Church (tithe). This sets priorities in your life.

Pay off debt – pretty self explanatory, debt = bad.

Build Savings – 6-9 month Emergency Fund, Retirement, children’s college and (eventually) Investments

Get Insurance – Health, Life, Long-term care, etc.

Legal Docs – Wills, Power of Attorney, etc.

We haven’t done badly since this course, but we still have some student loans from me and on the flip-side we would like to increase our savings and to start preparing for NJ’s college. I’d also like to start giving more.

Our second goal is to get healthy. To be completely honest, I presently weigh about 50 lbs more than I did when I was in Peace Corps just 7 years ago. I carry that weight relatively well due to my build, but I really need to not only lose that weight, but another 10-15 lbs beyond that. I’m of an age that I have to get serious about this (although when isn’t a good age to take this serious?). I’ve been working with RR on it.

My plan is two-fold. First, I have been doing the Fast Diet, which you really should check out if you haven’t heard of it before (Google it!). It’s something I hope to employ for the rest of my life. The general concept is that you limit your calories to ¼ of your normal recommended intake (~600 calories for an adult male) once or twice a week. If you want to lose weight, you limit yourself two times per week (or three if you are ambitious). The other days you eat whatever you’d like or normally would. If you’re maintaining weight, just do it once per week. A number of studies have shown that limiting your caloric intake at least once per week also has beneficial internal knock-on effects such as lower blood sugar levels, cholesterol, etc. I’ve lost about 20 lbs since July even though I couldn’t follow the diet for about 6 weeks due to moving.

The second thing I’m doing is trying to fit regular exercise into my schedule. There’s an indoor pool adjacent to my building that I’ve gone to a few times already. There are also two workout rooms that I can use. I’ve even considered getting a bike to ride to work, although I’m a bit put off by the pollution and heat/humidity.

I’ve started keeping a record of when we fast, how often I work out, and my daily weight.  The dork in me has turned it into an Excel spreadsheet with accompanying graph. I can just say I like the trend line, although I need to work out more.

This past week, RR started working at the Consulate. We also have an Ayi who has made realizing these goals a possibility – she deserves a post all her own at some point. I’m starting to get the hang of my job and all the craziness that it entails. Routines are being established. These goals may not seem particularly exciting, but they will set up the rest of our lives. Yes, we will still make time to travel and do some fun and amazing things – we’ve never been to Asia before after all. But we’ve decided these next two years are going to set up that which is next in our lives.

But I’ve got a plan again, and I’m excited about it.