A mid-year's resolution: How I'm going to keep living healthy

Since we are now halfway through 2008, it's a good time to reassess our healthy living goals for this year. As I wrote in my last post, it's a good time to recommit yourself to the goals you may have set back in January, or to set new goals for the second half of the year.

Here are some of the goals I've been thinking about during this mid-year week.

Examine my diet. I have already begun doing this, and I have written about it here in previous posts on coffee creamer and whole wheat bagels. I have a few other foods I'd like to investigate to get a sense of what I'm really eating and make changes accordingly.

Strength training. I have set a concrete fitness goal to be able to do an unassisted pull-up within the next few months. Right now, I'm lifting about two-thirds of my own body weight.

Develop this blog. My Healthy Life blog is about two months old now, which is young in the blogosphere. I am quite enjoying it so far, and I have done well with establishing a regular posting schedule and sticking to it. My goal for the rest of the year is to promote my blog and expand my audience, and get feedback from you, my readers, about what you would like to see here.

Professional development. I work at a newspaper, and newspapers have been notoriously slow to embrace online and multimedia. An online media specialist named Howard Owens laid down a challenge for journalists to become "more wired" in 2008, and I took up his challenge. This blog is one of the results. He laid out a list of ten goals to meet, and I still have some work to do. This list has inspired me more than anything else professionally this year, so, over the next six months, I will continue my "getting wired" gameplan.

Reconnect with friends. It's hard sometimes for me to find the time to send a simple e-mail to friends I haven't talked to in awhile, but we need friends as part of a well-rounded, healthy life. Thus, I would like to reconnect with some of my old friends, and renew some relationships that have languished. I have also recently found some old college friends on Facebook and MySpace, and I need to keep up with them and what's happening in their lives now.

Enjoy my hobbies. Among all of my other goals, I want to keep enjoying my hobbies. The main two things I do in my free time are gardening and roleplaying. I hope I don't get so busy doing everything else that I neglect these hobbies.

The first half of 2008 has had its ups and downs, and I hope that by sticking to the goals above, I can have a better second half of the year.

One of the cores of living a healthy life is consistently growing, changing and improving. These goals will be my blueprint for the next six months to make my life as healthy as it can be -- physically, mentally, professionally and socially.

What are your mid-year's resolutions? What's your blueprint for the rest of the year?