30

I recently turned 30. My wife and friends surprised me (those sneaky hobbitses) the day before with a birthday bash. Maybe it was their friendship or maybe it was the freaky clown on the cake

I apologize if you are afraid of clowns

but when I looked in the mirror on my birthday, I told mysellf, “enough is enough.”

You see, I entered 2012 in a pretty sorry state.

For those who’ve been following this blog, you know we’ve been trying to sell our home. Well, we  sold it a few days after Christmas. After having our home on the market for nearly 8 months, you’d think I’d be excited but those 8 months were arduous, as we had to mull through low-ball after low-ball offer. After all that waiting, we still ended up selling our home for much lower than we anticipated and had to wipe out our savings and borrow from my sister in order to complete the sale.

I kept saying positive things to my wife like, “You know, some people had it much worse and lost a lot more money on their homes,” “Sure, if we rented after we got married we would’ve been in a better state but 7 years ago, NO ONE was renting because home values were skyrocketing,” “Sure they took all our money, but at least they didn’t take away our kids or vital organs or anything.” But who am I kidding? I wasn’t trying to alleviate any of my wife’s concerns; I was attempting to reassure myself that I wasn’t a complete failure.

I say I don’t subscribe to traditional gender roles but when it comes down to it, I still consider it my duty to provide for my family. After having been married for 7 years, all I had to show for it was $13.54 in my savings account and I’m now living with my parents as a 30 year old.

When I’m feeling down, I usually turn to food. If you couldn’t tell, I kind of like food. A lot. So the entire holiday season, I felt like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, “I eat because I’m unhappy, and I’m unhappy because I eat. It’s a vicious cycle.”‘

To top it off, I had zero motivation for anything and often felt lethargic. I didn’t workout. I didn’t update my blog. I told my kids I’d read them books later. I passed my time with simple pleasures: memes on Reddit and games on my iPhone. I got the point where much of the content on Reddit were reposts and I unlocked all the achievements in Plants vs. Zombies (this was 1000 times less exciting than I thought it would be).

WAH! WAH! WAH! Will you get to the point already?!?!?!

Right. So, now we’re back to me looking at my jiggly, unmotivated self in the mirror on my birthday.

I sat down and made goals for my 30th year.

1) Eating whole food – I read In Defense of Food, watched Food, Inc., a few years back but processed and fast foods were so much more convenient for us as parents. D1 is now able to point out McDonald’s, Panda Express, and other fast food places in the car. Yeah, it’s time to change.

I’m going to try and follow “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” So that means minimally processed food (no more than 5 ingredients). But don’t worry, I’m still going to enjoy a juicy, sizzling steak every now and then.

I like it rare

2) Consume more Scripture and less media

3) Exercise regularly – 3x/week

Aside from having to pee every morning around 6am, 30 doesn’t physically feel any different than 29. But I’m resolved to make it my best year yet.

Go, Pop, go!!!

What about you? Have you made any goals for 2012? What changes did you go through when you hit a milestone birthday?