Still no stinking resolutions: 1st Quarter goal update

And so today marks the end of the first quarter of 2009. It is kind of amazing how fast these past three months have gone by, but it has been a good year for me so far. Back on January 1st I posted about how I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, as they tend to be rather vague in nature and not necessarily realistic. Rather, I prefer to lay out some goals I would like to achieve for the year. Well, in an effort to hold myself accountable, I’m going to review my goals on a quarterly basis throughout the year and see what progress I have made towards achieving them. This year I had three major goals in mind, two with quantifiable means to verify their achievement and one that is very much subjective.

Weight loss

The first major goal I set out for myself this year was to lose 25 pounds and I am happy to report that I have made solid progress towards this goal. To date I have lost 14 pounds in 2009 and a total of 22 pounds since my diabetes diagnosis in November 2008. Amazingly, I am 102 pounds less than the highest my weight has ever been (I’m torn between being embarrassed I let myself go that badly and excited at the achievement). Now, this weight loss has been over a number of years and, after losing the first sixty pounds relatively quickly, my weight has bounced up and down within a ten pound range over the past five years to where I was back in November. However, I have significant incentives to get healthy not only for myself, but for my wife and son.

I am also happy to report that I am off the nightly insulin injections and am hoping by losing another twenty or so pounds that I can reduce the dosage of the two insulin sensitizing medications I am currently taking. Realistically, I need to lose about thirty pounds to get to an ideal healthy weight based on my conversations I;ve had with my doctor and what I felt would be an obtainable goal. I still have a lot of work left to do in this department, and, as a result of the progress I have made, I am revising my annual goal upward to a total of thirty pounds. That will still leave me with about fifteen to lose going into 2010, but I would be very happy to be that close to the ultimate goal.

House for sale

In short I haven’t made much progress in this area, unfortunately. This isn’t any issue with procrastination, but rather timing and opportunity. There are something like 28 houses up for sale either through agents or by owner in my small neighborhood and right now we don’t feel like we’re seeing enough sales go through that warrant putting a sign in the yard. While I would like to sell to take advantage of the home prices in the areas where we are looking to move, not to mention the great rates we have been seeing, we are willing to be patient in this area.

Blog growth and social network understanding

This has been an area that has been a lot of fun for me. I’ve gone from zero to about thirty subscribers in my feedburner account and from about ten to over sixty followers on Twitter. I still don’t utilize Twitter to its full potential. I’m still a bit of a lurker trying to figure out the best way for me to participate in the conversation, but I’m having fun with it. As far as my blog goes I started participating in Wordless Wednesday and Tell Me Thursday to get me going as far as some deadlines on getting new posts out. Just as I was gaining some momentum there I also started participating in Fatherhood Friday over at dad-blogs.com, which is a great group of blogging dads and moms.

Having deadlines for getting out new content on the blog has helped my planning and, hopefully, improved my writing. I now have about two weeks worth of blog post ideas and topics laid out for myself that I refer back to regularly. Many of these ideas turn into drafts and, ultimately, become what you see here on Real Men Drive Minivans.

I have been more focused on creating content that is interesting, funny and at times helpful, so my focus over the next quarter will be on getting the word out more about my blog and hopefully gaining additional readership. I have another idea for a project on fatherhood that I would like to launch, but I still feel that I have a lot of work left to do establishing my personal brand, if you will, so that I’m not starting a second blog completely from scratch.

While the results from this goal aren’t necessarily quantifiable, I am excited by the possibilities the knowledge I have gleaned from running this blog. I initially started RMDM as a creative outlet for myself. If you watched this past season of Top Chef one of the contestants was talking about how another contestant couldn’t “silence the creative monkeys”. Well, in my case, I need to give them a case of Red Bull because the next original idea in my head may very well turn out to be the first.