New Years Resolutions Update

Diet and Exercise

Diet is going smoothly and on Sunday Bone and I start our class at Esh Circus Arts!

Picture of a green dumbbell and two pieces of broccoli arranged in the shape of a dumbbell.

Finances

I'm still diligently sticking to my financial plan. I paid off a credit card! Only two credit cards to go and the total is under $5,000. Lest you think I'm flagrantly irresponsible, I feel I should let you know that one of those cards is composed entirely of medical debt and the other is composed entirely of divorce debt. Life lessons? Be careful who you marry and live somewhere with cheap universal health care.

What else? I just filed my taxes and I've also donated to two more places in keeping with my every other week donation schedule.

February's first charity was the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. This project is really amazing. I learned about it because I have a friend in the tribe who works for them as a teacher trainee.

Map of Martha's Vineyard with Wôpanâak language place names.

Story time: When I was a kid my family visited the Wompanoag tribe of Aquinnah on a family vacation to Martha's Vineyard. Before that I'd been your typical clueless white kid who dressed as an "Indian" for Halloween and assumed the cowboys killed them all off long ago. I remember being surprised when I met and played with a group of Wompanoag kids my age who weren't at all like the stereotypes. After that I read everything I could about their tribe and was really upset to learn I was being lied to in my history classes at school. Fast forward to 2006. I worked at a community-based acute psychiatric treatment facility for kids and this friend was one of my coworkers. We stayed Facebook friends after I left and eventually she got a job with this project.

Ok. So what exactly does the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project do? Their goal is to return fluency to the Wompanoag nation so they teach people the language. They have adult classes, kids classes, an immersion program for grades K-6, and a 3-week summer program for kids ages 5-15. Their classes are only open to tribal members and their families and they're completely free.

Howling wolves.

My other donation this month is to a place I've already talked about on here - Wolf Hollow aka the North American Wolf Foundation. You can read more about them on their website and you can see my visit to them in this blog post.

Spirituality

I'm keeping up with my prayers, gratitudes, and church attendance. I've also gotten a bit better at shutting down negative gossip around me and resisting the urge to do it myself. It's an ongoing struggle, though. Frankly Jesus' idea of loving your neighbor is harder than it seems because not all of our neighbors are easy to love! I'm sure there are plenty of people who think that about me as well, though, and I'm trying which I suppose counts for something.

To-Do List

This month I made a will. I just have to get enough money to make it official.

Picture of a pair of glasses sitting on top of a last will and testament.