I think in my last post, I mentioned I was looking at some opportunities for professional growth.  Well, I got them.  Yay me.

Sadly, these same opportunities mean that it’s 9:40 Central time and I am just now leaving work.  I’m also getting over a cold which sucked.  It wasn’t like the last cold where I could still work out.  This one put me on my rear end and I stayed there.  I was in bed by 10:30 or 11 every night which for me is RARE.

So, between the combination of lots of work and cold, blogging hasn’t been much of a priority.  Even over on BlogWellDone.com where I blogged every day in January.

But, I’m never one to back down from a ping.  So, let’s see.  The good.

1.  Depending on which scale you read, last wee I lost between 7 and 8 pounds.
2.  I got a report back from my nutrionist saying I was doing better with me eating.
3.  I didn’t stress eat which is hugely shocking.
4.  I’ve cleaned up my cube every night but one.
5.  I’m shaving (most days) which is pretty rare or me, too
6.  I met with a spiritual mentor for the first time.  I hope I can use faith to curb my least favorite part about myself: my temper.

So, all in all, a lot of the little things I tried to change have stuck.

Now, for the bad news.

1.  Due to my cold, I canceled training on Monday.  I went last week Thursday and I think it set me back a day or so.
2.  My food intake this week has SUCKED.  SUCKED.  Only once was it really stress eating.  The rest of it has just been opportunity eating.  There’s a post somewhere about dieting and the social activity of breaking bread with friends.
3.  My food intake this week has SUCKED.
4.  My food intake this week has SUCKED.

So to summarize, last week my weight loss was good.  I could see myself putting at least some of that back on this week.

With that said, I told me wife that all that badness ended tonight after dinner.  Until next Friday, I am detoxing like the first week of my weight loss challenge.  It’s going to be hard with Valentine’s Day, but I need to eat better.

I have to do better.

Okay, that’s the my check up.  It’s not great, but I’m resolved.

I break Professional Goals into two distinct groups:

Day Job

My day job is great.  It has its days and the occassional weeks when I am thankful that we have strong windows lest I’d jump from them or maybe just toss my laptop out of them.  But all in all, I like what I do.  I find it intellectually challenging and I feel like I am rewarded for what I do.  Plus, I think I can have a career and advance without having to switch jobs.

Still, I think that I can do better and achieve more in my day job.  Whether rightly or wrongly, I believe that to be everything I want to be there are some things I need to change.  Loosely, these things fall into two categories:

1. Image
2. Organization

I want to be thought of as a go-to person, someone you put in front of clients and who can deliver.  To do that, I feel like I need to look the part.  Because I am overweight, I keenly understand how big people are perceived, I understand the stereotypes, and I know how untrue they can be.  So, step one is to changing the image I project which involves improving my look and losing my weight.

How I do that will be discussed in my next post.

Organization.

Now that’s another story.  See, certain parts of my life are meticulously organized.  My day.  My schedule.  The steps it takes to achieve the projects I am working on.  But other things…not so much.  This includes my work area and documentation.  What I have found is that the mess of my workspace reflects (negatively) on me sort of like the impressions of my weight.  And if I want to be the go-to guy, I have to remove negative reflections.

So step #1: clean work area.

Concrete step to achieve this goal: After work, I am going to get in the habit of cleaning up before I go home.  I think the change will be noticeable.

Step #2: In general, I need to be more organized about documentation,too.  I’m pretty good at this, but I have a feeling I need to be better.

Concrete step: I have green hanging folders and manilla folders.  I am going to organize all the hardcopy I have and do a better job of keeping notes with their assigned folders.

Concrete step: Do a better job of organizing my electronic media.  I mean that’s what folders are for, right?  Plus, I do want to be environmentally friendly, too!

Fortunately, in this area I have a great mentor who can help me out.

Food Writing

So it’s no secret that I do food writing/blogging.  BlogWellDone.com is one of my passions as is writing about food in general.  I would like 2010 to be the year I look back and say my blog went gonzo.  In the past 12 months, I’ve hit so many major milestones of blogging, but there are so many more I want to hit.  We’ll discuss those in the coming months.

I would also love to add more magazine credits to my name and maybe, finally, get a cookbook written.  We’ll see.

Sadly, I don’t have concrete steps here yet, but that’s because my focus has been elsewhere, but one thing I do know that I need to do is network and guess what…that means style and physical changes.  Even if no one else cares, it will make me feel better.

With that said, next are my physical and image goals since that seems to be a repeating theme, no?