Prepping new year’s resolutions

Gideon ParkerStaff - December 28, 2020

With 2020 almost over (thank goodness!), many people make new year’s resolutions of things they want to improve on and do better the next year. The most common one people usually make is losing weight and exercising more. 

While this is a great tradition, and for most of the month of January people usually stick to their goals, we tend to get lax and by February or March, many have let their goals go. 

I  believe that accountability is a way that can help encourage and remind us to keep going. Since this is such a great community, I want to do a little experiment and see if people would be interested in not only sharing their new year’s resolutions related to prepping, but to be a way that others can check in on them and remind them of their goals if they would like. And if you are reading this in March, June, or August, feel free to hop in at any time!

Here is the format if you would like to be involved. List your goal and if/how often you would like people to check in with you on how you have accomplished it.

For example:
Goal: Do some form of exercise 5 days a week for the entire year. 
Check in: Yes, if someone could ask me for an update at least once a week, that would be extremely helpful. 
Other info: I bought a calendar specifically for this goal. I’ll mark off on there to keep track of my progress. I want to be in better shape so that if I had to bug out, run for my life, or just work on surviving after a disaster, that I would be more prepared physically to do so. I’ll do a mix of strength training and cardio.

I hope this can be a valuable tool for everyone to think about what they can do better to prepare, but also to continue to build up this great community of friends.

Some other prepping new year’s resolution ideas: Lose weight, build a BOB, have at least 3 months of food storage, learn how to can food, start a garden, learn how to reload your own ammo, share a prepping idea with a friend and family member each month, store 50-100 gallons of water, take a first aid class, read 4 books about preparedness, learn basic orienteering, learn to change the tire and oil on your car…

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I’ll start off by using the idea of my original post, because that is one of my main goals this year.

Goal: Do some form of exercise 5 days a week for the entire year.
Check in: Yes, if someone could ask me for an update at least once a week, that would be extremely helpful.
Other info: I bought a calendar specifically for this goal. I’ll mark off on there to keep track of my progress. I want to be in better shape so that if I had to bug out, run for my life, or just work on surviving after a disaster, that I would be more prepared physically to do so. I’ll do a mix of strength training and cardio.

 

Okay, I’m in! I have one habit I want to build (Goal 1) and a few more directly prepping related things I’d like to try at least once, just for practice, but could use some accountability around…

Goal 1: Actually do my PT— at least one exercise a day, at least five days/week.
Check in: I’d love a weekly check-in!
Other info: So I have this neck-back-shoulder thing (probably from sitting/typing) and I really need to be more consistent in rehabbing it or it’s going to get worse and interfere with my other fitness goals, some of which are prepping related. I also have a terrible track record with actually doing my PT, so if anyone has tips for how they remember to do 30 reps of 10 exercises three times a day, and do them correctly, I’m all ears!

Goal 2: Live out of my BOB overnight in the backyard.
Check in: Ask me in June or July, when the weather is better and I have more time!

Goal 3: Practice stringing up a tarp.
Check in: This is another summer project, so ask me in June or July.

Goal 4: Begin learning a new skill— either learning HAM radio basics or some form of self-defense.
Check in: Ask me in September!
Other info: I’m young, nonessential, and immuno-uncompromised, so I’m just assuming I won’t get a vaccine until June at the earliest, and then it will be outdoor adventure season, which means taking classes or practicing anything consistently will be tough. As such, this is a good fall project for me— and I’d really like someone to remind me of that when the time comes.

Thanks in advance, friends— and great idea, Gideon!

 

Those are some great goals! I’ll definitely try and help check in with you later on. 

As for a way to remember your PT, you said you need to do them three times a day. And you probably eat three times a day. I would set a goal that you can’t eat until you do your PT exercises, that is a pretty good motivation. 

Another idea could be to include it with when you brush your teeth in the morning and afternoon, so then you only have to find time in the middle of the day to do the other rep.

Setting alarms on your phone can help.

 

The eating idea is GREAT. I have so abused the phone alarm/reminder approach for regulating my own behavior that I pretty much ignore them now, but I can make meals contingent upon completion of PT. Best part is that I have to stop working/cuddling my dog/nerding out on this site to eat anyway, whereas phone alarms often interrupt me when I’m in the flow of something else.

 

My wife is the same. She has like 10 alarms going off throughout the day and ignores them. And they always seem to go off when I’m busy in the other room and can’t go turn them off right away…

 

How has your PT been going pnwsarah? 

 

Wow, thank you for the check-in! I actually found yoga video that encompasses several recommended motions and I’ve done that 6/7 days per week. I’m going to try to keep doing that daily until I can actually see my PT and get a new suite of homework exercises. 

We also adjusted my WFH desk setup. We’re both in so much discomfort now that my partner cannibalized his music studio for parts for more ergonomic setups for us, including making a standing desk with a mouse pad made from a sheet music stand and making his (adjustable!) drum stool into a new desk (i.e., kitchen table) chair for me. So now we have three “desks” that we can rotate among (none of which were actually intended to be desks, but whatever), and I can drop my shoulders all the way at all of them, which I think will really help.

How are you doing with your exercise goals?

 

Great work! Keep it up 🙂

That sure is nice of your partner sacrificing his music studio for you.

I was doing good with my exercises, alternating between cardio and strength training every day. But I’ve been incredibly sick since Wednesday, and will probably take a week to feel well enough to get back into exercising. Ugh… You never appreciate your health until you are sick and can’t get out of bed. 

 

PNW Sarah;

During rapidly changing circumstances, with CERT status, under some conditions, “non-essential” might be converted to “essential”.

Recently had received a note to get shots updated and current. It’s for CERT.

 

That’s a really good point, Bob. My DSW credential is still through my old program, since I moved from out of state right before the pandemic hit. Until they process me in (low priority rn) I’m officially a DSW/CERT in a different state and can only do planning activities here— no actual deployments and, I would guess, no expedited vaccine access. I wouldn’t fight for it, either: I’ve got young healthy lungs and I’m an introverted homebody, so I don’t mind quarantine life and my odds of full recovery are good if I do get sick.

There’s also the fact that because the vaccine rollout hasn’t been, shall we say, seamless, we might all end up getting vaccines in whatever order allows the doses not to go bad rather than based on need. I’d feel terrible about getting vaccinated before seniors, immunocompromised people, and people who have to go to work every day, but not if the shot they put in my arm were otherwise going to go to expire in a freezer.

 

I’m in the same boat as you pnwsarah. I work from home, don’t go out much, young and healthy. I would much rather just stay at home and have those who need to go out and work or people like my grandma who is old and has lupis which would really take her out if she got covid.

But if there was a way for me to get a dosage sooner because it was going to expire and no one else was around for some reason, then I would love to get it, and every time I have a cough or a fever, be a little bit more comforted that it probably isn’t covid.

 

In a realistic, worst case scenario, more than planning might be asked of you.

Although sheltering in place is ideal, in case of a forced (natural forces) or mandatory evac, it could be better for an assignment in an Emergency Operations Center than in a large canopy tent just waiting for the unknown.

Consider making reduced size photocopies of your Calif (?) CERT docs and load them with your PPE.  No one predicts the future less sages and fools.  Who the heck knows if, eg, a critical shortage of people at the radio room, watching the medical oxygen supply, helping at the co-located emergency animal shelter,……

Don’t feel bad about senior (This is officially called “compassion fatigue”). Regardless of their personal beliefs, responders are more important to their well-being than a shot that takes > a month for effect.

I’m in all categories less front line health care worker status.

On my load-bearing suspenders, I’ve got a document pouch with copies of my “credentials”.  Well worth considering doing as a “mini-kit”. Some of the “sophisticated EOCs ask if I have any photos of myself for their in-house temporary ID card.  Reply:  Of course.

Today’s Sunday Washington Post had numerous articles on the vaccine distribution programs. It’s really a logistics matter.  I’m so glad we’re not going to war !

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