First of all let’s go over some of the goals I had set for myself before I stopped blogging:

• I didn’t do the greatest at keeping up on the guitar. In fact I quit practicing all together. It’s sad, because I still really want to learn to play, but right now I just have so much going on (lame excuse I know).
• I stuck to my dieting goals, eating smaller portions mainly, but also eating healthier in general. Well this one is a big whopping success! I went from 215 pounds when I first posted I would try a healthier diet, down to a much more appropriate 185 pounds today. Yay me!
• I’ve stuck to the excercise….mostly. I’ve been trying to hit the gym about 3+ days per week. I’ve also been trying to run as much as possible. This comes and goes. Some weeks I do great, others not so great. I know I can run a 5k in about 22-25 minutes though.
• I’m still working on building my financial strength. This proves harder for me than I realized, but is still chugging along at a positive pace. I’m working on improving my credit/savings enough to buy a house next summer. More on that next.
• School. It sucks. I’ve been at a loss about what I really want to do with my life other than making money. I work in healthcare and love it. So naturally I decided maybe nursing would be a good fix for now. I thought that to be an RN (LPNs never get the respect or pay they deserve) you needed 4 years of college (BSN). I was wrong! I discovered this week that I qualify for a 3-semester RN program at a local college. I’ll be spending my next year retaking one or two classes to improve my odds of being accepted, but I’m excited about my new direction!

So to recap, I’ve been busy! But I HAVE been making improvements in my life, so it’s not for waste

Because of my increasingly hectic life and my goal to maintain great grades this semester in school, I decided to drop one of my courses for this semester. This still leaves me at a full-time status in school, but I feel like having this one less class will help me manage stress, get better grades, and focus on all my goals. I also signed up for a condensed summer course. I plan on taking some paid time off from work during the summer classes so I can get them out of the way.

My eating also slipped up this week. I found myself eating out several times through out the week because I was too busy to stop at home and prepare a healthy meal. Along with that, I didn’t work out at all this week (maybe once or twice). Yup…I feel like crap already. It’s amazing how fast you can go from feeling like you’re in great health to feeling cruddy.

In other news, I bought a few new websites and am working on restoring some old ones, since I let all my internet hobbies drop a while back. Who knows if anything will come of them, but it’s a skill that can only benefit.

This next week is a lot less hectic for me. I work my three 12-hour shifts, but they’re spaced out better this week. My class that has been dropped will allow me to have a little more normal schedule as well. So plans/goals for this next week:

1. Write some good, quality articles for this blog

2. Practice the guitar

3. Sell my car (Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. I’m selling my Nissan 240SX)

4. Work on my other websites, especially the forum on a particular site.

I’ve thought a lot about what I really want from this blog lately, and I’ve come to a conclusion. Over the past couple of years I’ve learned a lot about my meaning of happiness and and what I want out of life. To reflect this, and because this blog bears my name, the shift in my blogging will be to self-improvement. This covers a wide variety of things including being happy, financial freedom, time-management, learning…and who knows how many other categories. You should expect to see posts about saving money, cutting down stress in your life, and eating healthy. I think this shift will help my writing to become more focused and less stressful.

Of course ultimately this blog is still all about one thing: Me.

In order to convey this shift in my blog I also wanted a new theme. I wanted a theme that had a photo-friendly header space and a three-column layout. What I ended up with was the Mandigo theme, which actually fit my bill perfectly. Here’s some features of the new layout:

• Rotating banner: With each refresh and page view the banner image rotates. Most of the banner photos are taken by myself, but a few were found on the internet (copyright free, of course).
• Random quotes: In the far right sidebar at the top you will notice “Inspirational quotes”. Like the header, these quotes also rotate with each page view, giving you new inspiration with each page!
• Flickr gallery: Directly underneath the “Inspirational quotes” are four thumbnails from my Flickr gallery. Clicking on any one of those will take you to my Flickr page where you can view all of my photos.

The overall point of all these features was to provide inspiration while at the same time a little relaxing scenery. I hope everyone enjoys this shift in my blog. Now everyone should subscribe to my RSS so you can come back and learn to live a happier life!