Resolution Check-in - 2023

Every year I do 10 resolutions for myself and 5 for my kids, and then don't look at them until the next year when I see if I actually did any of these things. Here's what I wanted to do in 2023. And what I actually did.

10) Get my hydration levels to over 50 percent.

0. I stuck at 48 percent at the highest

9) Exercise consistently 4 times a week.

1. Done.

8) Keep my nails nice.

1. Done

7) See two friends a month, and do two family activities a month.

.5 we did two family activities a month, but I don't think I saw two friends a month in a concentrated way.

6) Fix three things about the house

0. I looked into fixing the doors, too expensive. I looked into fixing the windows. I cannot. They don't sell window panes separately, and the whole windows would need double panes to keep up with new regulations. I set up to redo the girls bathroom, but that will happen in January. I DID get a landscaper to fix up the yard. Looks good.

5) Make $120,000.

0. I made $25,000 LESS than I made last year. A high-paying freelance client fell off. But working two full time jobs and two part time jobs plus doing all the family stuff still exhausted me.

4) Achieve something notable at work.

1. Huh. I forgot about this one. I got one of my staff a promotion and a fairly hefty raise to go with the title. (Still garbage, but that's corporate America for you).

3) Read 12 books

1. Okay, so technically I finished 11 books, but I'm halfway through two more, so I'm counting this. 12 books is a LOT for me.

2) Get this house clean

0. Nope.

1) Fix all landscaping and back deck.

.5 I did the landscaping, not the deck.

TOTAL: 5/10




For my kids and I, I resolve the following:

5) Help them navigate tween-teen years, be someone they can trust and love.

1. Doing the best I can. I think they know they can trust me.

4) Get them involved in more household duties.

0. They are still doing the same household chores, but at least they are doing that.

3) Save $10,000 more each for them.

1. Done.

2) Pay full attention to them when they ask me for something, but don't make them think the sun and moon both revolve around them.

.5 I have done a pretty good job with this.

1) Help them get involved in sports, extracurricular activities or something else they like and can consistently contribute to.

1. Dulce is in the school play, and Natalina is regularly going to the gym.

3.5/5

DITL - 2023

Every year I do a DITL (I skipped 2018 and 2019 but I've been back on track for a couple years now). Through the years, I photograph an entire day, usually around Valentine's Day, simply because that happened to be the day that I started it all in 2011 or so. It's cool to look back on how the days have changed.

Morning starts at 6 a.m. now that the girls have to make an earlier bus.

Wake up for everyone.

Breakfast ready.

Lunch ready.

Blood pressure medication keeps my body from stroking out, so that's good.

Fletch is ready for his walk, but not quite yet.

Breakfast time!

And I get ready for work.

Girls missed the bus, so we get to drive in morning school traffic.

Almost there.

And off they go, Bobcats.

Get to the office.

First thing I do is replenish the coffee for the office.

I check my email and make my to-do list for the day.

Morning rounds with my production staff, Elena and Gator.

Then I visit the reporters, since I've just come off a stint of being acting news director and I miss them.

My production manager comes in to ask if he can go home yet, and the answer, of course, is always no.

This is the system where I enter the promos. Each video segment gets a code, a time code, a title and description. That code goes into the system, digitally connected to the video which I upload to a different system under those numbers for Elena to fill the log with and for master control to hit the button when it's time to play it.

I check in with Ryann, our digital reporter, before heading to lunch.

I go home, throw in some laundry and get my lunch ready. I'm hungry bc I forgot to bring any cereal for breakfast.

Leftover beef stew, biscuit and some reading. Borrowed this book from my daughter.

Just because I'm on lunch doesn't mean Carlos or Fletchie are. Hard at work, these two.

I then start making dinner. It's a two-part process.

Grab a quick hug from my husband before going back to work.

I approve the community planner which airs throughout the week on our channels, after I pick three events and Elena writes a script off those descriptions, gets a voice over for it, then puts all the graphics and text together.

This is a PSA. I go through what they send us, and choose which ones we will air. I download the video.

Then I give the videos a code and put them in the system.

Here are the back satellites, where we transmit and receive information.

I color in between tasks to chill out.

End of the day and I've done only part of the list.

Time to go home.

I change up and go to body combat right away. I get out a little after 5 and this class starts at 5:45.

Afterward, a couple of us talk for a few minutes.

Back home for part two of the dinner.

This is tomato crab bisque. Audrey taught me the recipe years ago. 

It's the perfect complement to the sausage bread. My mother's recipe.

We all eat up.

Fletch helps me fold the clothes.

Then it's good night for everyone.

And that is a typical day in 2023. I've now had this job for 15 months, the longest I've ever had a job where I go to the office every day.

To see the other years, here are the links!

2022

2021

2020

2017 

2016 

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

Resolutions - 2023

Okay, new year, new resolutions. This year, I want to concentrate on relationships. With friends and family.

10) Get my hydration levels to over 50 percent.

No matter how much water I drink, I haven't been able to lift it over 48 percent according to my "smart" scale.

9) Exercise consistently 4 times a week.

Moving this goal down a little. I want to be fit, but I want to make more time for spending with other people, too.

8) Keep my nails nice.

Keeping this.

7) See two friends a month, and do two family activities a month.

I need to make more time for the people in my life.

6) Fix three things about the house

I will do it this year.

5) Make $120,000.

Gotta keep moving the goal posts up.

4) Achieve something notable at work.

This will count any large, positive change. A promotion, raise, award, notable benefit for my staff, anything that's more than going in 40 hours a week.

3) Read 12 books

I have not been able to read many books since the girls were born. I'm going to try for one a month, even though I've been balls at this for decades.

2) Get this house clean

Just deep cleaned for a party mostly. I will upkeep and hire help.

1) Fix all landscaping and back deck.

I will do this, this year.




For my kids and I, I resolve the following:

5) Help them navigate tween-teen years, be someone they can trust and love.

Keeping it

4) Get them involved in more household duties.

Right now, they do dishes, recycling and sorting their laundry. I want to add a few chores to help them segment their day and handle responsibility.

3) Save $10,000 more each for them.

Keeping. 

2) Pay full attention to them when they ask me for something, but don't make them think the sun and moon both revolve around them.

Tough balance here. Currently, I have found that I don't pay full attention to them when they are asking for things, which frustrates them, and at the same time as not doing them, I have somehow convinced them that the sun and moon revolve around them. So, I need the opposite.

1) Help them get involved in sports, extracurricular activities or something else they like and can consistently contribute to.

I want to help them find their way into being content and proud to be a part of something.

Resolution Check in - 2022

Every year I do 10 resolutions for myself and 5 for my kids, and then don't look at them until the next year when I see if I actually did any of these things. Here's what I wanted to do in 2022. And what I actually did.

 

 

10) Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. 1 point

I did this, mostly. It's dropped a tiny bit lately, but I'm taking the point.

9) Exercise consistently 5 times a week. .5 point

I did this for the majority of the year, but from November on, I've been going just 3 times when I can because things got really busy.

8) Keep my nails nice. 1

Amazingly, I'm still not back to biting my nails. They aren't long, but they aren't stubs and I try to paint them every couple weeks or so.

7) Get good at this job. 1

Killing it. So much so that they gave me another, harder, job to do at the same time.

6) Fix three things about the house 0

I fixed not one big thing. I did get Carlos to re-put-up a shelf that had fallen. LOL


5) Make $100,000. 1

$116,503.17 - I did this by working 2 full-time jobs, 2 part-time jobs, and 2 regular freelance jobs

4) Work on my freelancing book 0

I did no work on this at all. Why isn't there more time in the day?

3) Read 10 books 0

I read 2.5 books, lol

2) Get this house clean 0

This is actually a disaster. I am working hard on deep cleaning right now so I can maybe hire someone to help keep it clean. Right now, my house is a hellscape.

1) Fix all landscaping and back deck. 0

Complete fail. I really want to do this, but I just didn't have time to even touch it since last year. It's even worse.

4.5 points. Not great, but working all those jobs leaves me very little time.

 

 

 

For my kids and I, I resolve the following:

5) Help them navigate tween-teen years, be someone they can trust and love. 1

We're going through it, but things are slowly improving for the long game.

4) Get their rooms cleaned and organized so they can decorate the way they like .5

Nat's is cleaned, Dulce's is getting there. Keeping up with it is another matter.

3) Save $10,000 more each for them. 1

Done.

2) Have one conversation with that that lasts 10 minutes or more a day. (Dinner doesn't count.) 1

I mean, almost.

1) Teach them to cook 0

I did not do this. But my kid did learn how to use the toaster this year, so there's that.

 

3.5 points. Still have to get on that cooking thing.

How to Introduce Your Child to Technology the Right Way

Many parents have a fear of introducing their children to laptops and tablets because they’re afraid they’re going to misuse them. And these fears are not unfounded. If you don't put barriers around the usage of these machines, you can expect your child to start spending more time than you’d like on them, and this can quickly turn into an addiction.

You also have to know which types of devices are appropriate for a child and make sure that they start developing safe practices when using these devices. Let's take a look at how you can introduce technology to a child the right way.

Start Small

If your child is under five, then we wouldn’t recommend that you get them a full setup yet. The most you should give them is a small tablet for children only. The tablet needs to be robust and have the strict minimum needed to run a few educational apps. You have to be very careful how you introduce the tablet too. It should stay in your possession most of the time. Make it seem as if it is your tablet and not theirs.

Only allow them to use the tablet after they have completed a task and use it as a reward. Also, restrict the use of the tablet to certain times of the day. This way they will see the tablet as a treat and will be less likely to form a habit. And if they throw a tantrum, take away the tablet for a week. You'll see how well-behaved they'll be next time around.

Upgrade Them to a PC

You should start thinking about buying your child their first PC or laptop around the age of five. You can go either for a laptop or a desktop here. A laptop will be better if they need to use their laptop at school and a desktop will be better if they do most of their work from home. A desktop will make watching what they're doing easier too. Here, go for a computer with processors around the 1.5ghz mark with four cores at the very least, 8GB of RAM, and anywhere from 100MB to 500MB of storage.

Get a Few Accessories

Accessories will allow your child to unleash their computer's potential and help them fall in love with it. We suggest that you get a nice headset and a wireless mouse/keyboard combination if they have a desktop. You should also look into webcams if they show interest in creating content. If you're looking for great accessories for children, you can check out these kids PC accessories.

Use Parental Control Apps

You need to have control over what your children are doing online and off. So, you will need to invest in some sort of parental control app. These are not perfect, mind you, but they will do the trick if your child is still young.

Some of the apps we suggest you check out include Net Nanny, Kaspersky Safe Kids, and Norton Family. Not only will these apps help control the amount of access they have to different sites, but they even have features like geolocation that will allow you to know where your child and their devices are at all times.

Follow these few tips if you want your children to get familiar with technology without becoming addicted. Start with baby steps, no pun intended, and start building their setup as they gain experience and show responsibility.