On Everyday Goals

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Yesterday, my friend came over at around 10 PM and asked me what I'd been doing since we last talked at 5 PM, and I listed the following:

did an hour of yoga, wrote two blog posts, made two miniature chicken pot pies, watched a DVD on public speaking techniques (while doing some crunches and arm exercises), took a shower, researched graduate school programs, looked up new job opportunities, negotiated for work, hung out with my roommate, and planned my recipes for my baking contest on Sunday

Some people think I'm crazy and would never want to live in my oxymoronic organized dissaray, but other people ask me how I get so much done. It's quite simple though really: set goals for yourself over your lifetime, once a year, once a month, once a week, once a day, every few hours. I kid you not. It is as easy as creating a mental checklist for the daily goals, but it's as complicated as reflecting on the narrative your life has taken on for your lifetime and yearly goals. 

But let's start easy here: At the start of each morning when I get to my office, I reflect on the day before, read my horoscope (yes, I give into that one new age-y thing), go through Twitter quickly, look at pretty things on Pinterest, and then concretize what I have to get done that day both at work and during breaks. Only then do I really take the time to go through and answer my work emails. 

I couldn't do any of this each day if I didn't have larger narrative arcs I wanted to follow throughout the month and year. For instance, this month is the month of my birthday, but it is also early fall. For me, that means clearing out the old things I have and making room for new opportunities. To that end, last week I held a garage sale and I obviously set my yearly goals during my birth month. I have several concrete goals in mind for this month: make travel plans, clear out the clutter in my room, do more yoga and run every other day, and begin studying for the new GRE. I make sure that I have the time to do at least a bit of this each day. It helps me sleep better at night, what can I say?

So, okay, I'm a little bit crazy about these things. I don't know how the people close to me can stand me sometimes because I can be so adamant about accomplishing so much in an afternoon. But the people who make plans to make things happen are the people who get shit done and change things and are in control of their own pathways in life. And I want to be one of those people. 

One of my goals this month is also to relax about the goals and let things unfold in their own time. Which is why I love a good cocktail in the late evening to wind down and take life slowly again. Sigh. Life is beautiful, but only if you are determined to make it so. 

And, to finish, some words I live by:

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[Get Involved Tuesdays] To Eat or Not to Eat...

Meat. (Please excuse the rambling of these thoughts, but there are a lot of ideas going on here, lol)

Last night, my brother and I had Scott and Grant over for dinner and we had a lively discussion about what it means to be a vegetarian. We discussed the controversy of raising one's children vegetarian and if that takes away their freedom of choice, which then turned into a comparison to religious families and forbidding pork or beef in the household. This led Scott to question whether vegetarianism could be on the same level of religious or spiritual importance and left us all scratching our heads. (Any ideas on this?) And at this point, my mom said what she has always said, which is "Everything in Moderation."

Which is a great philosophy, but one that many Americans do not prescribe to. I referenced a lecture I saw of Jonathan Safran Foer. He said that since he wrote Eating Animals many people would approach him, lamenting the fact that vegetarianism was important but they could never commit fully to a vegetarian diet because of events such as Christmas dinner made by grandma that includes a succulent ham. Foer argued that for many there may be these significant occasions that can dissuade vegetarianism for that one day, but that one day does not eliminate the significance of making a conscious effort to eat more "green" on other days. I compared this to my fall off the vegetarian "bandwagon." I had traveled to another country and decided to try local dishes, many which contained meat. When I came back to LA, I began negotiating with myself, arguing that if I slipped up and had bacon for breakfast, then the whole day was shot and I could help myself to steak for dinner. These became wasted days that then became a habit and there went years of vegetarianism, because I had convinced myself that it was an all or nothing deal. But as Foer pointed out, abstaining from meat for just one day a week can make a difference. In addition, he discussed that in his own evaluation of meat-eating, he did not necessarily have those "events" that warranted the consequences of meat-eating, so why waste a meal?

In my own life, I feel the same way. I like not eating a lot of meat; in fact, too much meat, especially red meat, tends to make me lethargic and almost ill. There are times that I want to eat meat and these are few and far between. Perhaps once every couple of months, I'll really crave my mom's chicken curry or when I'm traveling, I'll have a desire to have real souvlaki. In those cases, eating meat and being conscious of my decision to eat meat proves much better for my health and the world's health.

I want to transition to a (mostly) vegetarian diet again, but this time, I don't want it to be an all or nothing process, where I end up putting so much pressure on myself, I feel deprived of something that I didn't really like in the first place. Instead, I want to look for sustainable/local/organic meat if I am really craving it and know that every day/meal that I refrain from eating meat makes a difference to the world, whereas meals that I eat mindlessly may end up doing a lot of harm.

What do you guys think? Is vegetarianism an all or nothing thing?