Posted by Phil on August 11, 2008 – 8:05 am
This morning I was perusing through Kellementology.com, Kelly’s ever inspiring blog and ran across a reference to wordle.net. The image is from my wordle of thoughtsparks.net. While tag clouds are nifty in the sense of expressing categories, wordle is more like a look into the psychie of the person writing the blog. For better or worse I talk a lot about certain ideas or topics. Good to see that words such as "life", "change" and "great" top the list. Hope I continue to pursue making great changes in my life 
Posted by Phil on August 11, 2008 – 6:11 am
Maybe it’s entropy or just getting set in your ways, but as one gets older it seems on the outside that it gets harder and harder to change. In reality our lives and our bodies are in a constant state of change. It’s just that as we move through life some of those changes are not always positive, healthy or improvements to our overall well being.
A year ago I decided that some things in my life needed to change and while in no way it’s been easy, I’ve made some real progress in the right direction:
- First change came on August 27th when I stopped drinking coffee and any caffeinated drink. Since then I still have tea but it has become so irregular that I am no longer tethered to caffeine to get me through my day.
- The drop in caffeine resulted in the reduction of sugar due to the fact that I no longer try to keep the peak going all day instituted by large quantities of caffeine in the morning.
- My overall weight has dropped a solid ten pounds from the peak of 202. I now bump along or just under the 190 mark. Partly a result of the decrease in sugar intake, small changes in diet and increased exercise.
- Started walking this summer with my sweet wife Sabrina and our dog Sheba around the neighborhood for half an hour each evening. To my wonderful surprise at the dentist last week my blood pressure dropped a full 20 points on the top and bottom numbers from six months ago. I was on the high end of normal previously. While weight loss had a part to play I believe the daily exercise had the biggest roll.
- Had braces put on a few weeks ago. It’s a strange feeling just prior to turning 40 years-old to be wearing a mouth appliance of teenager. All three of my girls and myself are in different stages of orthodontic care. Just image the ding that one is to the pocket book.
- Grew a gotee. No health implication here but with braces and a gotee, a slightly trimmer me, I both feel and look a bit different from a year ago.
There are other changes happening in my life that are subtle and still brewing. Change brings change and almost like waking from a stooper realized that I need to be more tenacious to drive change in the right direction as I move through life. I realize that life will constantly change and I need to be aggressive to keep moving against the flow if I’m going to enjoy the ride. Those small habits affecting how we spend our time, our money and all the resources we posses brings big effects either positive or negative in the long run.