Now, there’s a title to catch your inter­est, right?

Yum. Cof­fee and choco­late. Cof­fee. Choco­late. Cof­fee and choco­late together. I need to stop right now, or I’ll need to end this post to go get some choco­late and brew a pot of coffee!

As I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, I attended a MOPS con­fer­ence in Octo­ber of last year. At that con­fer­ence, I went to a ses­sion called “Brad, Angelina, and Oprah: Rais­ing Kids Who Can Save The World.” The premise of the ses­sion was that too many times, Chris­tians wait for a cause to become main­stream before embrac­ing it.

Chris­tian­ity at times has seemed to be com­pletely opposed to envi­ron­men­tal­ism. How­ever, we are called to take care of God’s cre­ation which he has given us. Chris­tians have also spent much time and money send­ing mis­sion­ar­ies across the globe when there is suf­fer­ing right in our own towns. How I feel about each of these issues could eas­ily fill another blog post. I’m going to try to stick to cof­fee and choco­late and save the rest for another day.

One of the issues that Tracey Bianchi touched on at the MOPS con­fer­ence was fair trade. What is fair trade? Fair trade is basi­cally a (some­times con­tro­ver­sial) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that is given when a farmer or arti­san is able to fol­low cer­tain prin­ci­ples which include:

• Fair prices
• Fair labor conditions
• Direct trade
• Domes­tic and trans­par­ent organizations
• Com­mu­nity development
• Envi­ron­men­tal sustainability

–taken from Trans­Fair USA Basic FAQs

For me, fair trade con­nects with sev­eral impor­tant Chris­t­ian val­ues. One is that peo­ple are taken care of. If I buy cof­fee or choco­late, it is not grown in the United States. The dif­fer­ence between a farmer grow­ing cof­fee and fair trade cof­fee can mean the dif­fer­ence between earn­ing $500 (non-fair trade) and $2000 a year (fair trade). That is a sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence. Also, some­where around 80% of cof­fee grown with a fair trade cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is also organic.

Many peo­ple are famil­iar with organic and some of the ideas behind it. Organic gen­er­ally means that some­thing is grown or raised with min­i­mal chem­i­cal input and in a way that is ben­e­fi­cial to the envi­ron­ment around it. In addi­tion to being ben­e­fi­cial for the envi­ron­ment, work­ers who labor on organic farms are exposed to far fewer chem­i­cals and other toxic substances.

All this brings me back to choco­late and cof­fee. I have decided that in the month of Feb­ru­ary, I want to only con­sume organic, fair trade cof­fee and choco­late. I have pur­posely cho­sen Feb­ru­ary because it is the month of Valentine’s Day and choco­late. I wanted to do this when it would require a sac­ri­fice and not sim­ply result in me buy­ing more expen­sive choco­late while miss­ing nothing.

Jason and I have talked sev­eral times about dif­fer­ent cof­fees and how they taste. To him, each cof­fee is dif­fer­ent. Some are smooth. Some are more bit­ter. Some are darker. To me, the only dif­fer­ence is if it’s made right or not. I really can’t tell much dif­fer­ence between an expen­sive cof­fee and a cheap one. I only know if it’s absolutely ter­ri­ble, and the two times I can think of when that hap­pened, it was oper­a­tor error. So, by lim­it­ing myself to organic, fair trade cof­fee, I will pri­mar­ily be say­ing that I am only going to have the cof­fee from my home which I know to be cer­ti­fied both. This means no impromptu stops at cof­fee shops unless they pro­vide this option and no cof­fee at friends’ or family’s homes. Def­i­nite sacrifice!

For choco­late, I am hop­ing to have a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. Instead of buy­ing one type or one bar of choco­late and using that to sus­tain me for a month, I’m hop­ing to buy sev­eral types of choco­late and com­pare them. I picked up a bar of Green & Black milk choco­late today. This is organic choco­late that I have never tried before! When I bought it, I assumed it was fair trade. I had a lit­tle bit of trou­ble find­ing this infor­ma­tion at first glance on their web­site, but they are fair trade cer­ti­fied! There may be a choco­late tast­ing party in my future, who knows?

While the rea­son I am ini­ti­at­ing this exper­i­ment is because I want to do some­thing, if only for a month, that impacts oth­ers in a pos­i­tive way. I also want it to be a sac­ri­fice to do it. I am hop­ing that this month will be an expe­ri­ence in taste, tex­ture, and aro­mas that I have never expe­ri­enced before.

Stay tuned, and I’ll have you drool­ing even more over choco­late and cof­fee!  If you’re inter­ested in join­ing my exper­i­ment, leave a com­ment!  If you blog, I’ll link up to you, and if you don’t blog, you can send me e-mails and I’ll post your thoughts.

If you’re inter­ested, here are a few links to infor­ma­tion about fair trade and organic products:

Organic Cof­fee Reviews (With a side of social activism)

Fair Trade Cer­ti­fied | TransFairUSA

Grounds For Change | Organic Fair Trade Coffee

Mar­ket­place | Chocolate

Wel­come to the Jan­u­ary Breast­feed­ing Carnival!

This month, all the posters will be dis­cussing their breast­feed­ing goals. I will link to the other par­tic­i­pants as they post. Check back through­out the next cou­ple of days to make sure you get all the links!

Here are my breast­feed­ing goals.

Cur­rently, I am an extended, tan­dem nurs­ing mother. I have a three year old and a one year old who are breast­feed­ing. Three years ago, my goals were to breast­feed my older son, K, for 6 weeks. Once I achieved that goal, I set longer and longer time based goals. With my sec­ond son, A, I didn’t really set those types of goals (6 weeks, 6 months, 1 year), because I was still breast­feed­ing K, and I knew that I would be able to make it as long as we both desired.

As 2008 came to a close, I started think­ing about my life. I started think­ing about goals I wanted to have for 2009. I joined a read­ing chal­lenge. I set a fit­ness goal. Then, I thought about breast­feed­ing, and from a quick glance at my sit­u­a­tion, it would appear that I don’t need to make a goal, right? Maybe some peo­ple would encour­age me to set some wean­ing goals, but that’s not really my desire. My desire has been for some time now to let both of my boys self wean. I want Mommy Milk to be avail­able to them as long as they need it. I sup­pose some peo­ple would also say that’s a goal. I sup­pose it is, but I decided that more than that, I want breast­feed­ing to be a good, close bond­ing expe­ri­ence for us just as it was when they were tiny. After think­ing about it for some time, I decided that I do have breast­feed­ing goals that are very inten­tional and not just going with the flow.

1. I want to “be there” with each of my boys when he is nurs­ing. I won’t be talk­ing on the phone, watch­ing tv, read­ing, or talk­ing to some­one else.
2. I want to con­tinue to nurse on demand through the day. My boys are both night weaned, but because i have put that restric­tion on their nurs­ing, I don’t want to have restric­tions dur­ing the day.

3. I want to respond to their desire to nurse with honor and respect for their needs and wants. Some­times I tend to feel “touched out.” When I am touched out, I find it harder to nurse on demand and harder to be pos­i­tive, lov­ing, and respect­ful. Some­times I feel grudg­ing, tired, and crabby. I want to remem­ber that this is some­thing I choose to give my chil­dren as long as they need it. Because it is a choice to con­tinue, I want to do so in a way that respects every­one involved.

4. Lastly, I want to con­tinue to talk about tan­dem nurs­ing and extended nurs­ing. I want peo­ple to know that there are moms out there who are doing these things and that both the moms and the chil­dren are healthy, nor­mal, and well-adjusted people.

Check out these blogs for more breast­feed­ing goals (updated as the posts go live):

Secrets of Orual

Moth­er­wear

Zen Mommy

Hobo Mama

Breastfeeding123

Black­tat­ing

MilkAct

Mama Knows Breast

Breast­feed­ing Mums

Some­one please request these books before my hus­band burns them. That’s what Jason told me to put in my blog post tonight. My first ques­tion was where was he going to be able to burn them. We live in town. Of course, he was jok­ing and not actu­ally plan­ning on burn­ing any­thing, but he is tired of piles of my books falling down on him when­ever he sits on the couch. I sup­pose I can under­stand where he’s com­ing from. Since they are my piles of stuff though, I tend not to mind as much.

Here are the books I’m hop­ing to give­away and/or swap:

(I’ll give these away on a first come, first served basis. If you have a book or two you would like to offer up for a swap, let me know. If not, just e-mail me at casey at berbs dot us.)

Freefall by Kris­ten Heitzmann

After Anne by Rox­anne Henke (Book #1 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

Find­ing Ruth by Rox­anne Henke (Book #2 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

Always Jan by Rox­anne Henke (Book #4 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

With Love, Libby by Rox­anne Henke (Book #5 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series)

The Secret of Us by Rox­anne Henke

four­Souls by Trey Sklar , Jedd Medefind, Mike Peter­son, Matt Kronberg

Atone­ment Child by Francine Rivers

I think I have Becom­ing Olivia (Book #3 in Com­ing Home to Brew­ster Series) some­where, too. If I can find that, I will update this post.

Right now, I’m inter­ested in any­thing that makes me think. It can be fic­tion or non-fiction. I just don’t want any of those super easy, really light reads. Any swap­pers out there?

Through­out my entire life, I have had eczema.  It has ranged in sever­ity from annoy­ing to unbear­able.  I have had it on my legs, arms, feet, hands, neck, face, and ears.  Yes, I’ve even had it on my ears!

Now, at the time of year when it’s nor­mally at its worst, my eczema is gone!  About 9 months ago, I saw a doc­tor about it, and she rec­om­mended that I try to elim­i­nate (at sep­a­rate times) wheat and eggs from my diet.  Since I had already eaten dairy free for such a long time after hav­ing A, we knew it wasn’t dairy caus­ing my eczema.  Well, I didn’t fol­low her advice.  I couldn’t ever get started.  I would plan to start, and then I’d decide to do it a dif­fer­ent day.

Mean­while, over the past year and half or so, Jason and I have been try­ing to decrease the num­ber of processed foods we’ve been eat­ing.  We’ve also been eat­ing many more fruits, veg­gies, and whole grains.  In the past few weeks, I’ve been mak­ing our bread, spaghetti sauce, and soups.  The other thing that I have changed (more than Jason or the boys) is that I have stopped eat­ing most meat.

Over the past year and a half or so, I’ve been a part of a group of women who have dis­cussed sev­eral times the ben­e­fits of eat­ing well and using high qual­ity, whole foods.  One of the women went to a com­pletely whole foods, mostly organic diet.  She has also found that her eczema cleared up.  So, while I’m not guar­an­tee­ing a con­nec­tion, it seems like a pretty strong con­nec­tion, and I plan to con­tinue eat­ing this way.

I’ve been get­ting nos­tal­gic lately.  In the past few days, I’ve been think­ing about nurs­ing, nurs­ing K, nurs­ing K while preg­nant, and what it was like when I thought he was wean­ing at 19 and 20 months.  Right now, A is 18 months, and I can’t imag­ine what it would be like if he wasn’t nurs­ing.  He’s still such a baby!  He barely talks.  He doesn’t eat much as far as solid foods go (in my opin­ion, which is obvi­ously pretty sub­jec­tive).  He doesn’t drink cow’s milk.  He’s a BABY!

Right now, K is 3 years and 2 months.  He nurses for com­fort only, and he often nurses between 1 and 3 times a day.  Yes­ter­day and the day before, he nursed only once all day long.  Today, it was three times.  Although he may not be any­where near wean­ing at all, I still think about it.  I think that I am far more pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­ity now than I was a year and a half ago.  I feel like I know him bet­ter.  I feel like he knows him­self bet­ter.  I feel like we can work through hurts, tired­ness, sad­ness, and sick­ness now in a way we couldn’t before.  When he wasn’t nurs­ing dur­ing the end of my preg­nancy, I would often hold him and feel uncer­tain and con­fused.  How would I help him if he was tired?  What would I do if he was sick and couldn’t keep any­thing else down?  I was at a loss.

Dur­ing that time, I read an arti­cle called Wean­ing Ella at Brain, Child Mag­a­zine’s web­site.  When I read it at that time, I was a mess.  I was in tears, and I only felt the bit­ter­ness of an early wean­ing child.  Now, as I reread that arti­cle, I do feel a lit­tle bit­ter­ness as my baby grows and needs me in dif­fer­ent ways.  How­ever, I also feel a sweet­ness to it.  We have done this together!  Nurs­ing is a part­ner­ship, and we are we made it this far by work­ing together.  Most of the time when I think about wean­ing or hear about it, some­one is talk­ing about a baby wean­ing.  I think right now is a time when I am wean­ing, too.

So, some­one com­mented that I had started to talk about how I met Jason but never fin­ished the story. I have had a busy week and been pretty tired at the end of the days, so I put it off, because it is a pretty long story. Tonight, though, I’m going to rem­i­nisce and do my best to make it as inter­est­ing to you as it is to me.

The first time I met Jason was at a Cam­pus Cru­sade Christ­mas Con­fer­ence in Min­neapo­lis. How­ever, that wasn’t the first time I had ever seen him. He was in my fresh­man Applied Cal­cu­lus class. It was a huge class of like 150–200 peo­ple (I’m ter­ri­ble at esti­mates, but this is how I remem­ber it). We had never talked because of the size of the class, but I knew he was in my class. He didn’t remem­ber me from class though. When we are at Christ­mas Con­fer­ence, a friend intro­duced us. We played the card game Hearts with a cou­ple other friends. I don’t play cards, and I am not good at card games. How­ever, that night, I man­aged to win the game by a LOT. We talked a bit through­out the week­end. Noth­ing par­tic­u­larly excit­ing as far as I remember.

We went home and the semes­ter started. We didn’t have any classes together from then on, but we had lots of mutual friends. We ended up being at a lot of the same events and activ­i­ties. Toward the end of Jan­u­ary, Jason called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to a movie. I’m not sure what in the world I was think­ing, but I chose the movie In Dreams with Annette Ben­ing. I chose the movie, and now I have to won­der what in the world I was think­ing!?!? It wasn’t a blind date, but we def­i­nitely didn’t know each other well, nor was I plan­ning on hold­ing on tight to his arm and bury­ing my head in his shoul­der. I don’t know.

We kept see­ing each other. We ended up dat­ing through the rest of the school year, that sum­mer, and into the fall. Then, it hap­pened. Jason men­tioned in pass­ing some­thing about sav­ing money and about feel­ing more seri­ous about me. I flipped out and did the only log­i­cal thing. I broke up with him. Dur­ing the time we were dat­ing, we had spent a lot of time together or talk­ing on the phone. He took the breakup very hard. I knew that he was upset about it and that he was hav­ing a hard time, but I didn’t know how to be a friend to him with­out being a girlfriend.

I had told Jason that I felt like he was expect­ing too much from me in the rela­tion­ship and he needed to develop other friend­ships. So, while we were bro­ken up, he did just that. He made some great friends and become one of the more pop­u­lar peo­ple in the cir­cle of friends we were a part of. He really grew as a per­son and a friend dur­ing this time. After a few months, I could see that he was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­son. Dur­ing this time, we saw a lot of each other, but we rarely talked. I made sure of that. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t seek him out, and I often ran away from him if I felt he was going to attempt to talk to me. My friends often ran inter­fer­ence for me. They would talk to him while I would escape and avoid.

For about a year, we didn’t talk much. Dur­ing that year, I spent sev­eral months work­ing at a camp in the Bound­ary Waters Canoe Area in north­ern Min­nesota. While I was there, I ended up dat­ing some­one else. It was one of those rela­tion­ships. There was no poten­tial there. We didn’t click, and it wasn’t healthy for either of us. Great, huh? I ended that rela­tion­ship the day before I turned 21, and I didn’t feel any regret at any point afterwards.

In Jan­u­ary of 2001, I was work­ing at my on-campus job when I found out that Jason had taken a job across the hall­way from me. At some point, things had become less awk­ward for us, and I didn’t think any­thing about Jason being in the same build­ing as me every day. There were quite a few col­lege aged work­ers in my office and in his. We vis­ited. We got cof­fee in the break room. We became friends again. At some point, I asked Jason if he would help me with some com­puter prob­lems I was hav­ing. He told me sure, but I had to make him sup­per and help him dye his hair. I fig­ured it wasn’t a bad trade off. He came over a few times and worked on my com­puter. At the time, I didn’t know it, but later he told me he could have fixed my prob­lems in one evening, but he kept drag­ging it out to be able to spend more time together. (I never had a clue!)

Dur­ing this time, Jason had been look­ing for jobs. He was plan­ning to grad­u­ate in May, and he needed a job. He inter­viewed for a job in Mitchell, SD and one in Min­neapo­lis, MN. Nei­ther of those ended up work­ing out. I knew at this point I was inter­ested in him, but I also knew that he was going to move in just a cou­ple months, so there was no rea­son to start a rela­tion­ship that wouldn’t go anywhere.

Feb­ru­ary came, and so did Valentine’s Day. One of my room­mates had a very steady boyfriend, so she was pretty excited to be receiv­ing a dozen roses. My other room­mate didn’t have a boyfriend, but she wasn’t ever short on male admir­ers. She was darn cute and nice! I was unat­tached and expected noth­ing. Shock­ingly, I got a bou­quet of red roses with­out a card. I called my dad and thanked him for the flow­ers. He didn’t know if they were from him and my mom, but he played along and said thanks. My mom called later, and she denied send­ing the flow­ers. Out of nowhere, she said, “They’re from Jason.” I told her they couldn’t be. He wasn’t inter­ested in me any­more. I’d had my chance.

Later that night, I did get a call from Jason. He was at a Valentine’s Day sup­per at his church for col­lege stu­dents where the guys cooked sup­per for the women. We vis­ited a lit­tle on the phone, and I asked how his sup­per was going. Then, he told me that the roses were from him. Then, he said bye and that he’d see me at work.

Um, what??? Why would you send roses to some­one with no card, tell her they are from you, and then nothing?

I spent quite a bit of time pray­ing and think­ing and read­ing my bible. I knew that when we had first dated Jason had been very seri­ous about our rela­tion­ship and had had a very hard time with the breakup. I knew that if I was going to con­sider being in a rela­tion­ship with him again, I needed to also con­sider mar­riage. I know that sounds like a huge leap. I didn’t nec­es­sar­ily think that dat­ing equaled engage­ment, but I knew that in order for it to be fair to both of us, I had to be ready for it to go that way.

A few days later, I was leav­ing town for a wed­ding. I was sup­posed to be leav­ing on Thurs­day after­noon, but I ended up not feel­ing well. I stayed home and took a nap. At some point that day, our phone rang. It was Jason. He didn’t want to talk to me though. He was talk­ing to my room­mate and one of my best friends at the time. He was ask­ing her what I thought of him, if I was inter­ested, what he should do, etc. She was giv­ing me big wide eyes and mouthing “what do I say???” I just layed on the chair and lis­tened to her side of the con­ver­sa­tion instead of let­ting poor Jason know I was there. Poor guy. She ended up telling him that I was indeed inter­ested in him, and that if he wanted to pur­sue dat­ing, I was prob­a­bly interested.

The next week, Jason came over to my apart­ment. We talked about us and the rela­tion­ship and how we had already dated. We decided that we would really watch our time closely. We didn’t want to com­pro­mise our rela­tion­ships with friends, our classes, or our­selves by spend­ing all of our time together right away.

At that time, I Kissed Dat­ing Good­bye by Josh Har­ris was a pretty pop­u­lar book. I was read­ing at that time, and it was actu­ally that book (although I’m fuzzy on specif­i­cally what in the book) that helped me decide I was ready to start dat­ing Jason again.

At some point in all of this, Jason was offered the interim posi­tion he had already been doing and was asked to apply for the per­ma­nent posi­tion. This was a load off my mind because it meant he wouldn’t be mov­ing after all. How­ever, the uni­ver­sity and bureau­cracy being what they are, the posi­tion ended up not com­ing through.

We con­tin­ued dat­ing, and while we were exclu­sive and didn’t see any­one else, we weren’t extremely seri­ous. That sum­mer, I went back to the Bound­ary Waters in north­ern Min­nesota to coun­sel at the same camp for a sec­ond sum­mer. Being sep­a­rated was hard. For me, it was eas­ier because I was busy for about 18 hours a day with my campers. At the end of the sum­mer, I went back home, and it was a lit­tle weird for me. It was almost like start­ing over a lit­tle bit.

Also dur­ing the sum­mer, Jason had been offered and had taken a job with the state of North Dakota. He trained teach­ers to use tech­nol­ogy. This involved a lot of dri­ving and a fair amount of time away from home for train­ing and work trips. So, after being apart all sum­mer, we were now apart when I thought we would get to spend time together. Our rela­tion­ship sort of car­ried on as it had been in the spring.

Then, came Sep­tem­ber. I’m not sure what changed, and look­ing back, nei­ther is Jason. He went on a trip for work to Hous­ton, TX, and he was gone for 4 or 5 days. While he was gone, I decided (or finally real­ized) I was in love with him and wanted to get mar­ried. I could barely wait for him to get home from his trip! I think I man­aged to wait until the day after he got home, but as we were watch­ing tv and doing home­work, I said to him, “Where is this rela­tion­ship going?” Shocked (under­stand­ably), he said “what do you mean?” I told him that I was ready to be seri­ous and that if he was, I thought we should talk about that. If he wasn’t I didn’t know where we were going. Once he picked his jaw up off the floor (again, poor guy), he told me that I should prob­a­bly fig­ure out what kind of ring I wanted if we were to get engaged.

From that point, things moved pretty quickly. We had “the talk” in the mid­dle of Sep­tem­ber. We got engaged in the mid­dle of Octo­ber, and we were mar­ried in June of 2002. Some of my fam­ily was shocked. At our pre­vi­ous fam­ily gath­er­ing (the wed­ding in Feb), I hadn’t men­tioned any­one. Then, at Christ­mas, I was engaged.
I guess you just can’t plan those things.

Through all of our dat­ing, I always knew that Jason had seri­ous feel­ings for me and that he was very sure of our rela­tion­ship. I only found out dur­ing our engage­ment how sure he was of our rela­tion­ship. He told me that the night we met, he had been sit­ting across the room from me, looked at me, and he knew at that moment that we were going to get married.

*sigh* What more could a girl hope for?

Sat­ur­day night, I was out­side shov­el­ing our dri­ve­way. While I was out there, I had plenty of time to think and let my mind wan­der. At one point, I started think­ing about col­lege, about Christ­mas break, about my years in school. Then, I real­ized it had been ten years (almost to the day) that I met my husband.

Ten years ago, I was a fresh­man in col­lege. Dur­ing my first semes­ter of my fresh­man year, I attended the university’s Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ meet­ings. At the end of that semes­ter, I decided to go to their Christ­mas Con­fer­ence in Min­neapo­lis. That is where I met Jason. At the time, I didn’t have any idea that he and I would get mar­ried and live hap­pily ever after. He did though.

It’s a lit­tle late now, so I’ll save the next part of this story for tomor­row or the next day. It’s a great story and worth the wait!

Credit: National Delurk­ing Week logo by Breast­feed­ing 1–2-3 from Com­puter Mon­i­tor with per­mis­sion from weird­vis (feel free to copy with link to both)

Jan­u­ary 4th to Jan­u­ary 10th is National Delurk­ing Week! Those of you who are blog­gers know that one of the most reward­ing parts of blog­ging is to get to inter­act with read­ers through the com­ments. I am very happy to say that I have great read­ers. I very reg­u­larly get com­ments (which I love). I do won­der though who is out there read­ing this. Some­times when I see how many peo­ple view my blog, I won­der if I even know that many peo­ple.

So, if you like what you read, or if you don’t like what you read, leave a com­ment! Let me know what you think of the blog, and MOST impor­tantly, let me know more about you!

I guess you could say that sums up my New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion. I want to do things on pur­pose. I don’t want to float through life and just take what comes. My life is pretty good right now. I’m a stay at home mom (a job I LOVE). I have two happy healthy chil­dren. I have an amaz­ing hus­band. We own a house. We have a yard. I could go on and on. Just think how won­der­ful my life could be if I spent more time doing things pur­pose­fully rather than just let­ting them happen.

In the new year, I want to leave behind the fast food lifestyle (a term I just made up, so if it doesn’t make sense to you, I’ll take the blame) and live inten­tion­ally. What does that mean? Well, to me, it means I want to stop wast­ing time watch­ing tv. I want to watch tv I choose to watch. It means I want to stop eat­ing fast food and junk food that have a lot of calo­ries but not much taste or nutri­tion. It means I want to stop read­ing quick, light, easy read­ing books. I want to read books that make me think. It means that I don’t want to waste time on the inter­net. I want to choose to relax by read­ing blogs I enjoy or vis­it­ing web­sites I like. I want to choose to use my time and cre­ate expe­ri­ences that I value. I want to choose to spend my money on things that mat­ter instead of buy­ing some­thing because it is cheap or a good deal even if I may not really need it.

Is that a res­o­lu­tion? A goal? A lifestyle change? I don’t know. I sup­pose it doesn’t mat­ter, but what I want is last­ing expe­ri­ences instead of fleet­ing ones. I want to make a choice and have some­thing to show for it down the road.

How about you? Do you have a change, goal, or res­o­lu­tion you are work­ing on?