Originally published on July 2, 2016. I’m re-publishing posts I’d had on this blog that, due to some glitch of the internet, got scrubbed. No editing has been done.

It’s here, it’s finally begun!

The next chapter that Mike and I have been planning, our big step into The Rest of Our Lives. We’re choosing the Pacific Northwest as our new home, we’re about to begin our most ambitious road trip to date, and we’re days from launching into 4 months abroad in Europe. Quelle grande aventure!

Except it doesn’t feel like anything grand has begun. I spent the first three days of my glamorous new chapter trapped in my apartment packing, with a grisly cast of Chicago characters that my landlady calls handymen. Hours of tracing the apartment edges with a Swiffer, sneezing through hidden dust and wiping down windows with bottles of Windex.

I followed the same monthly ritual every city dweller will recognize: pack boxes, sell what you can on Craigslist, and leave the rest in an alley to disappear or be eaten by the hungry summer rats.

It’s not a dramatic prologue, but I’m making the most of this transition to start building the habits I want to follow for the next 4 months.

New chapters start all the time, but you usually only notice that a page turned when you’re looking back. Sometimes you think you’re starting a new chapter, but you don’t end up changing as much as you wanted or planned. I thought moving from our first apartment post-college to our second would change everything – my friend was moving in with her boyfriend, I would never see her again! Everything didn’t change, I see her all the time. That apartment is now part of my Chicago chapter.

Sometimes new chapters start without your consent. I had all kinds of plans going into my senior of high school, before a tingle in my left arm redefined how I would spent that summer and the rest of my life. We plan, we plot, and we laugh about it years later.

But this chapter is different. This is a new one, and we all know it.

My Chicago life is wonderful, but I’ve been nurturing a few habits I’m ready to shed. For example, I never sleep enough. I’ve been a nightowl since I was a toddler, but over the past few years I was surprised* to discover that averaging 5 1/2 hours of sleep a night for years in a row meant I was less creative, healthy, happy, and patient.

I’m aware that most people don’t give themselves a full reset button like this (and that many people don’t have the means for it). I don’t want to waste it. There are specific changes I’m ready to make in my life. I want to take better care of myself, I want to learn new skills and pursue my interests. Mike feels the same way – he has ideas, passions, and goals of his own. Not everybody gets 4 months to change, but we do.

Here are a few of my goals for our next chapter. They’re designed to be easy to start and hard to maintain.

Get more sleep every night

More sleep than what? How much sleep is “more”? How can you measure this or prove you’re making progress?

Okay, I admit this goal isn’t the strongest for me to lead with. It’s not specific, measurable, or time-bound. But more sleep is achievable. I won’t stop being a nightowl – I like the late hours, the ones that feel like they belong to you alone. But I don’t have to chew into every night from both ends. I can pick my late nights and my early mornings.

Write every day

I won’t be publishing every day, but I should be putting words in a journal daily. Since I was a moon-eyed, precocious toddler, I thought I would spend part of my life just writing. When I studied abroad in South Africa, I discovered how creative, weird, funny, and occasionally introspective my writing can be.

This will not be a travel blog. I have spent months binge-reading travel blogs, and because I love you all, I will spare you my thoughts on “12 Ways to Pack for that Perfect Summer in Ireland” or “The 4 Things You Really Haven’t Seen in Paris.”

Instead I’ll try to capture the best and worst moments of this adventure. I’ll write about the places we experience if they move us, and I’ll ignore the ones that don’t.

Run 12 miles every week

I’m taking control – real control – of my fitness. I spent years cramming workouts into crack of dawn mornings and the late hours of the night. More often than not (especially in the off season), I would collapse at home exhausted in front of the TV instead after 13 hours in the office.

No longer. I know that only jogging isn’t enough to get into the kind of shape Mike and I want to be in for ultimate next season, and that’s okay. We’ve got other fitness goals together. But this is my base.

Running is how I plan to explore the new cities we’re traveling to as well. I’ll embarrass myself jogging in Paris or sweating through the German countryside, I’m sure. But you see the little details when you run. You notice the nooks and crannies that make cities and towns more than markers on a map. So off I go!

Miles Run this Week: 11

Throw 1,000 throws a week

Or maybe more!

Mike and I are both committed to this goal, for obvious reasons. We want to get better at the sport we love, and we both love throwing. Throughout the years, some of our best dates have been when we found a park and threw for a few hours, talking while we tinkered with our form.

I want to develop high-release breaks, real hucks, quicker releases, better hammers, lower forehands… the list goes on.

---

We’ll see what the next week – and the next four months – hold. Will I actually throw 1,000 throws? Can I run as much as I plan to? Will I ever really get more sleep? Who knows. Maybe.

But this is a new page, Clorox and all.

*Nobody else was.