Best Advent Ever 2016

And here we are again. Another reason to make crazy promises to myself about self-improvement and becoming a better friend, father, husband, employee, and, overall, a better person. It happens every Lent, every January 1st, and now I’ve added in Advent thanks to Matthew Kelly’s Best Lent Ever invention.

Why not? If we chose yesterday, the first Sunday of Advent, to work on a few things to make ourselves better, what’s the harm? If one of those new habits stick, or you and I can break some old, bad habits, who gets hurt? The answer . . . nobody.

I carry around this bag of guilt because you’d think, after forty-three years and all these New Year Resolutions, and Lents, and Advents, and birthdays, and all these momentous occasions when you and I were going to “turn over a new leaf” and make “today the first day of the rest of my life”, well . . . you think we’d have it all figured out.

Not many people ever do, I guess. Maybe that’s the journey. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and seasonal opportunities to fix something or change something. This past weekend, I posted my Christmas wish list, but today I’m going to post my Advent Wish-List. If I can cross-off the majority of the things on both lists, it’s going to be a great Advent and Christmas.

• Pray daily with all three of my children (I’ve gotten away from it with my oldest)
• Be there for my Aunt Denise more than I have been and make her more a part of my family
• Actually wake-up and take care of me at 5:00 a.m.
• DO NOT EAT in the evenings
• Exercise (at a minimum, walk the dog) in the mornings
• Avoid dumb sugar
• Maximize the hours of 8:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily for work (and nothing but work)
• Build a routine to help make December better and get 2017 off to a good start

And just like my Christmas Wish-List, my Advent Wish-List is a work in progress . . . as am I.