Early New Year's

Wednesday November 1st, 2007 - Lake Villa, IL

New Year’s resolutions started early this year. It’s only November 1st but I’m treating it like it’s a new year. I’m continuing on my personal mission of changing my whole life and career for the better and I think I’ll be alright. I had the whole day today to work because I didn’t have to take my Toyota to Fond Du Lac. My friend Jack was busy and we will do it another time. It’s not the end of the world but I wanted to get it taken care of today.

What I did get taken care of was starting on a healthier lifestyle program. I know I keep talking about it as do 300 million other blubbery out of shape bloated Americans. At least I didn’t wait until January 1st to start my program and then blow it three days later. I have a plan in place and I will hit the ground running by January. Better that than hit the ground dead with a heart attack. I know I have been eating horribly and I need to stop it. NOW.

I went to the grocery store and dropped $80 on stuff I haven’t been eating in a long long time. I bought organic fruit (yuck) and high fiber cereal (double yuck) and some range free eggs made from chickens that hopefully aren’t tortured by the ghost of Colonel Sanders so I won’t pack my colon with contaminants. I took time and really thought about what I put into my cart and I avoided the stuff I usually get like cheese and meat and soda and chips.

Listening to my Kevin Trudeau CD program might have had something to do with it and if it did that’s great. I have been feeling bloated and not sleeping well and I know that I am asking for a heart attack or a stroke. It might be later than sooner but I need a total change in my lifestyle or bad things will happen. I’d hate to be the funniest guy in intensive care.

This won’t happen overnight but I think I will see results quickly if I can establish a habit in the next month or so. My goal is to avoid red meat and cheese and sodas and chips for a period of thirty days. If I cheat it will be on Sundays only but the rest of the week is not an option. I will strive to eat more fruits and vegetables and especially drink a lot more water.

I’m not going to be unrealistic and expect to blow the gook out of my heart valves that’s taken a lifetime to pack in there. I still love bloody rare steaks and Pepsi and chocolate and lots of cheese and all the other crap Americans are force fed via TV and is so easy to find.

This will take a lot of conscious effort and I know I will fail and cheat once in a while so what I need to remember is that this is a lifetime job now. I am past the age where I could eat anything I wanted and I had a lot of years of packing my face with everything yummy. I can either appreciate it and start exercising or keep it up and see my heart pop like a zit.

I took a nice long walk today and enjoyed the sunshine. That won’t last long and the fall will turn into winter but I will find a place to at least walk a little every day. That’s a habit I need to get into and there are NO excuses. Weather included. I can drive to a mall and if it comes to that I’d rather mall walk with the old people than sit with a stroke and drool. I am not kidding myself or anyone else. I am in terrible physical shape and I have to start up slowly and work myself into a groove. Today was a start so I have that to be happy about.

After I went shopping I ate lunch at the Golden Corral. I love that place. There are a lot of different choices on the menu and for the money it’s unbelievably inexpensive. It’s a big test to go there because it’s so easy to go nuts with the bad food in that place. I could just as easily eat an entire chocolate cake and a Diet Pepsi as stack my plate full of vegetables.

Today I made only good choices. I had a huge salad with as many different fresh veggies as I could tolerate and passed on the dinner rolls the waitress brought out. I had no dessert at all and didn’t have any cheese or butter or red meat and I still felt satisfied afterwards. It wasn’t difficult to make these choices but that was just today. It’s doing it every day that’s the tricky part. I need to retrain myself and make a conscious effort to plan what I will eat.

It’s only one day so I can’t say I feel better. There is probably enough of the bad stuff in my lower intestines that it will take months to blast it out. I don’t want to end up like The Duke or Elvis with the impacted colon the size of a baby seal. I need to start cleaning it so I don’t wind up as a case study in medical school. Comedy isn’t exactly a healthy lifestyle.

Holding a microphone in one hand is not a way to break a sweat. There were never any Tae Bo or Pilates exercise videos with comedians hosting them. We all need to get off our couch and shake something once in a while and I know I’ve said it before but my time for that is long past. It’s almost with fear that I am going into this but at least I’m being fair to myself and not expecting miracles on January 1st like most other people do. This is work.

If I can walk a little and stretch a little every day for this month and eat a little better too (and less) it will start to make a little difference which will turn into a big difference. I have to change my physical lifestyle if I’m going to switch careers and be an entrepreneur. I will hopefully be putting in long days filling lots of orders and I’ll need my stamina to keep up.

If nothing else I’ll get some material out of it. Everyone else in America is in exactly the same boat I’m in and nobody wants to exercise and eat well but we all have to shape up. If I go into it now instead of January I’ll already be on a good mental ride before every other idiot starts a losing cause. I tried to start this year doing it and obviously I fell very short.

I accomplished one day so far and I’ll take it. Tomorrow is a new challenge. What I was happy about is I established a new email address for my business idea. I emailed fifty good people that I’ve told the idea to already and asked them to please keep sending me ideas if any should pop into their head. I will keep that list growing and put creative people on it.

I also heard from the law office and they said there are some other similar trademarks in what I am trying for but nothing dead on so they are going to do the nationwide search for $500. I am going nuts waiting for it but it’s the right thing to do in my opinion. Getting an unfriendly cease and desist letter after I’ve spent time and money getting a site running is a nightmare I don’t want to experience. Doing it now will hopefully avoid any future issues.

I will only focus now on getting that trademark and getting up and running with my idea so I don’t have to write it as ‘my idea’ anymore. I’ll explain it and then I want to go DO it.