As a magazine editor, I am deadline driven. The closer I get to one, the harder I work. I think I've always been this way. In college I tended to leave big projects, studying for tests and semester-grade-defining papers until almost the last minute. I've joked for some time that the reason I haven't written The Great American Novel yet is because no one has given me a deadline for it. I'm like those card-playing patients in Awakenings-someone just has to play the first card.

Lately, I've handled my diabetes in a similar way. In fact, I addressed the diabetes deadline on my blog a number of times. Today while I was finishing off a bag of M&Ms that had been in my desk for several days, I decided that I'd had enough of feeling like crap after eating junk food for no reason other than to be eating it. I was tired of eating and then not really being able to type so well, feeling like I was drunk when I spoke and generally having an overall feeling of shame.

It's been easy for me to stall restarting my morning exercise routine by making excuses about not starting on, say, a Monday or a Friday, or because I don't have the right kind of bread for breakfast in the house. The truth is, I just didn't want to do it. I mean, I did, but I didn't.

Today I gave myself a deadline. I'm calling it a monthly goal, but if I think about it right I can convince myself that it's a deadline. Perhaps I'll even invent a fictional editor to oversee my deadline, er, goals. On one lined sticky note that I put at the top of my computer monitor at work I wrote the following:

1. lose 8-10 lb.
2. walk at least 5x/week
3. only one soda/day or less
4. test after every meal
5. drink water

Underneath in all caps I gave myself motivation: YOU CAN DO THIS! I have a copy that I'll put somewhere at home. Maybe I need to make more: one for my dresser mirror, one for the bathroom mirror, one for the kitchen,

At first I worried that I was giving myself too many goals to manage, but really these are all fairly small goals that are all intertwined. I likely shouldn't have put the weight loss at the top of the list, but the walking and the increased water (I already drink a good amount of water) will definitely push me close to that goal.

I'll track my progress, maybe even get into a friendly competition with my husband (he can be my deadline enforcer!) and next month I'll give myself a new set of goals that will build on this month's.