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Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Health, Wealth, and Happiness. These are three common wishes in the English language to use at New Year's. And these are the goals that I set out to achieve as a professormom who always "has a lot going on." Updates about these goals, parenting, teaching, and scholarship will be the content for this new blog. Thank you for reading.

Health. In terms of health, I have signed up with my local YMCA for Team Lean, a team-based accountability system. If you know me, then you know that I love physical activity already. The 8-week long challenge will push me to do better when making choices about what and how much to eat. I am hoping that social media will provide the platform for the social support that I need from team members. If I can even get the 5% weight loss that these researchers suggest teammates can help you lose through support, I'll feel healthier. Additionally, I have set the goal to run more miles this year. Specifically, I would like to double my mileage to 400 miles in 2019. Thanks to my kind neighbor who runs with me 2-3 days a week at 5:15 am, I should be able to get these miles in before my toddler wakes up!

Wealth. Today is the day that my partner and I sit down and make our yearly budget together. This is really fun (after we enter in all the expenses) because we estimate travel for each month and talk about all the fun plans that we already have in store for our family. To save money, I am striving to only drink coffee at home and work. Goodbye, Grassroots, for now. That means that instead of inviting friends to the coffee shop to catch up, I will be inviting them to my home. This serves as a convenient motivator to always keep the house tidy because I won't know when I will have company on any given afternoon.

Happiness. I love my tenure-track position at Valdosta State University where I get to teach psychology and education classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It really is my dream job. But learning makes me happy. This is why I have set the goal (on Goodreads) to read 12 books, roughly one per month that isn't for class. I set this goal in 2018 and only read 8 books because I started listening to Apocrypals, a wonderful podcast, hosted by two comic book writers reading the Bible. More on the books I read this coming up next week. Likewise, I have submitted my application for the clinical mental health counseling program at Valdosta State. It is my intention to use our tuition assistance program to complete this degree so that I can counsel students at the counseling center in addition to just during office hours...

Whether or not I meet all these goals is not the point. Goal setting is part of self-regulating your time and effort. In addition to work, I want to focus on health, wealth, and happiness. Best of luck to you this year as you make and strive towards your goals.

Dr. Arrastia-Chisholm
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