Hi everyone – welcome back, and I hope you all had a superb break from work, had a Merry Christmas, and are all geared up for a storming 2009.

I had a great break – 12 glorious consecutive days off work – ahhhh! I could happily crack through another week off work. I feel like after the busy-ness of Christmas plus trying to cram a lot of things in between Christmas and New Year, I was really only just starting to hit my stride on the relaxation front by the 2nd – and tomorrow it’s back to work. Nasty. Still, I’m sure some of you only got the stats off, in fact some of you probably had to work the stats as well, so I’m not complaining!

New Year being a time for reflecting on the year before and all, this morning I felt compelled to sit down and write myself a list of goals for this year. I don’t believe in regrets, thus resolutions always seem a bit far-fetched to me, but I do believe in setting goals, so here are some of mine…. I’ve grouped them into categories.

1. Diet and nutrition

* Consume less caffeine (some days I think I can get up to a couple of diet cokes and a handful of coffees… I need to keep it down to two or less I’m thinking)
* Eat more vegetables (I’ve got better at this… even added a couple of new ones to my repertoire last year, I’ll see if I can do the same this year)
* Cook more (I’m very lucky to have a husband who is a mean cook – which means I do about a fifth of the cooking. It’s time I paid some of that back, plus it will mean I have a better handle on exactly what I’m fueling myself with)
* Focus more on nutrition, less on exercise (Not that I’ll be dropping exercise altogether, quite the contrary. However I feel like I often rely on exercise to do the job of keeping my weight down… it should play a part but overall I feel like the food I don’t eat is going to be my saviour in the long run)

2. Diabetes

* Maintain an HbA1c <7.0%. Aim for 6.5% by Easter and try to keep it under that for the remainder of 2009.
*  Try not to let the bad days get to me as much. Some days there’s no rational reason for high or low BGs, we all know it yet we continue to beat ourselves up about it.
* Continue with this blog, and try to show the diabetics of NZ that you can lead a normal life with diabetes, and you can achieve anything you want to. Bring you interesting and inspirational stories, and keep you up-to-date with technological developments.
* Get involved in as much diabetes charity as time allows.
* Try not to use the phrase “you have no idea how hard it is being diabetic” to my husband. He’s seen it and lived it for six years at my side and probably actually does have a fair idea how much hard work I put in. And he’s been pretty good at knowing when to let me rant on about it and when to tell me I’m being dramatic and to be quiet. And it’s not that cool for him sometimes either.
* Try not to sound completely disinterested/disbelieving when people tell me they totally understand what it’s like to be diabetic because they suffer from hypoglycemia/get shaky when they haven’t eaten for a while. (Well actually I will probably break this one the first time I hear it. It makes me so cross when people think this compares to having diabetes. It’s like telling someone with a broken leg that you got a cramp in your leg today and totally understand).
3. Lifestyle

* Swear less. I’ve got a lot of friends with young kids now who are starting to get to the mimicking age and I don’t wanna be that lady. Besides, it’s not big and it’s not clever.
* Finish work on time at least two days a week. You may think this sounds easy.  If so, you have never worked in advertising.
* Carpool more. This relies heavily on me achieving the point above.
* Sleep more. Again, if I can work less I might have more peaceful sleeps, and indeed, more time to practice sleeping.
* Read more books. (if only I didn’t spend so much time in front of a computer)
* Be less of a consumer.
* Stop and smell the roses.
* Go for more hikes.
* Be a good wife, daughter, sister, grand-daughter, in-law and friend.
* Look after the environment.
* Don’t get stressed.
* Appreciate everything I have.
* Be helpful to people.

And that, my friends, concludes my opening statement for 2009. I hope the year is good to you all, and look forward to hearing from you as it progresses. Bring it on!

Nic