Ways to furthur improve myself (beyond the typical New Years Resolutions)

My mother got this book for Christmas called Change Your Brain Change Your Life a physcology book about ways to improve your brain function. As I as I browsing through it and took the surveys at the end of the chapters I realized there were sometimes when I was at school where I was too high strung about things and that wasn't very healthy for me.
Examples:
The rating skill for these lists rate 0-4 0 meaning rarely and 4 meaning very frequently. If there are more than 5 3s or 4s in a certain checklist that means there is an issue. Luckliy most of my ratings are very low so there are no issues. :)
1. Category: Love and Sadness
Excessive Guilt 2 This was mostly relevant to my falling out with Will Porter and how I felt bad consistantly for putting Nicolina in the middle of our disagreement. I realize now that what he saw then that I didn't see was that we weren't fighting I was just nervous about drifting apart from him... but drifting apart from people will happen from time to time in your life.
2 Basil Galliga Checklist Looking into Anxiety and Fear
Feelings of nervousness and anxiety 2 (this also fits under the excessive and sensesless worrying category under the Cingulate checklist)

• Fear of being forgotten about by the Barn Playhouse interns
• Test anxiety or anxiety I got about doing well in a specific course at NEC ( IE: Dramatic Theroy, Theatre History I, Intro To Symbolic Logic, Way of Science, Multiculutral Education) Oy Vey the many breakdowns I had due to stress about grades. Looking back on all that now I realize I was putting far too much preassure on myself to get on the Deans List because a majority of my friends were always on Deans list. Keri Racicot offered me some very wise advice.. i think i still have the emails she sent me somewhere.
• Falling out with Will Porter
• Job search related stress

Excessive Fear of being judged/scrutinized by people 2

• Not fitting in with the people from Carriage Theatre Ensemble or how uncomfortable certain people in that group made me feel.. names will not be mentioned.

Excessive worry about what others think

• Auditioning for the theatre plays and worrying about the other people who had auditioned before being better than me. I remember when I was nervous about auditioning for the Apple Tree and I was talking to Jennie Leonard about how I was nervous I was on AIM. I think I still have that saved on my computer somewhere.

For the Prefontal Cortex,Temproal Lobe and Cingulate checklist I had mostly ratings of 0-2 not a lot of threes and fours which is good.

In order to have a fullfilling 2009 the key thing I need to do is find easy ways to relieve stress. I tended to get stressed out a lot during school especially during exam time because sometimes I procrastinated on work til the last minute giving me a lot to do at crunch time. I think when it came to time management there were issues that I had with learning to balance my work load with time spent with friends. I am taking night classes at the tech college this spring and I think taking one class at a time to ease into what I am studying will make thingd a whole lot easier on my stress level. I'm also very happy to be moved on from stuff related to the Barn Playhouse. Last fall I was way too hyper focussed on my falling out with Will Porter which then led to eventually being worried that everyone else I worked with forgetting about me. I know now that I am surrounded here my many good close friends who care about me and that the people from the Barn Playhouse are stil my friends too depsite the enormous amount of distance between us when it comes to talking to each other frequently. This is what makes planning the Barn reunion with Colleen Fee for when I go to New York in March with Matt all the more exciting because I will get to hopefully see a majority of the people I haven't seen since I left the Barn at the end of summer 07.

Reading continously will also help to improve my brain function. I did not get the chance to read for pleasure very much during school because I was always reading books and articles I had to read for class. Since I've been home from college I've read between 7-11 books. One of my new years resolutions is to excercise more and that was one of the things listed in the back of the book of things to do to improve yourbrain function. I also hope to write some new poems and short stories. Excercising my creativity will definitley help me to improve my brain

Time for dinner
Janine