One aspect of my new job that intrigues me is that I’m the first person in the company to be living in the Eastern time zone. Everybody else is in Pacific, so I’m usually going to be the first person working each day. Once I know what I’m doing, I’ll be manning the phones first thing in the morning to increase the amount of time that customers reach a live person.

I’ve never had a business (i.e., non-music) job where the timing mattered, and what excites me is the opportunity to develop good habits. There’s a 3-hour window where it’s clear I’ll be doing the same things every day, and I want to make those the “right” things.

For me personally, running is a part of that. I’m more awake and energized when I run first thing in the morning, so that’s my anchor habit of the day – wake up at 6:30, put the running clothes on, and get my butt out the door. Once I’m outside, instinct takes over, and my body kicks itself into gear (quite a low gear, but still).

The beginning of any habit is a critical time. Your mind plays tricks on you, and you negotiate your way out of your original best intentions. Often, you have to blast past your own resistance to achieve your goals. I know that resistance – I’ve blasted past it before. I expect it.

So I was expecting to find some resistance to getting up in the morning, and I was ready.

But when I got up this morning, it was 9 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). That’s without wind chill. 9 degrees below zero.

I’m equipped to run down to zero, but at my current level of fitness, I don’t think it’s safe for me to run much below that. So I let the resistance win today. I went back to sleep for an hour, and I’ll run later today – it’s supposed to reach a balmy 18 degrees by the afternoon.

I hate treadmills, so If this happened all the time, I’d have to use the indoor track at the YMCA (7 laps to a mile – it’s awesome), but I think today was an outlier. Sometimes you have to roll with it … you win today, resistance, and I tip my hat to you. Tomorrow I will crush you.

I love the concept of New Year … it’s the perfect time to start over, to start something new.

Today I started my new job at Moraware. I set up all my new accounts for email, internal chat, the help system, etc. Everything is new and shiny. I’m even wearing my Moraware t-shirt while I go through all the email I’ve ignored over the holidays (and watching Michigan State win the Rose Bowl). It’s a good day.

The new job is the most obvious big new thing for me this year – and I really want to knock it out of the park – but I have other big new things, too. I’m still enjoying my running streak (day 767 today), but I want more from running this year. I want to run the River Bank Run again in May. If that goes well (meaning that my overall energy is up and I have the time), then I might run the Grand Rapids Marathon in October, too. Maybe even the Huff 50k in December again – but if I do that, I’ll be way more conservative than last time.

But those are all things I’ve done before – I need a goal that I haven’t done, so I’m setting out to run 1,000 miles this year. I might have actually run that much in 2006, but I wasn’t recording my miles. Now I use Endomondo, so it’s easy to track my actual distance. Besides targeting a nice, round number, running 1,000 miles will force me to increase my mileage back to the point where I’m genuinely in shape. My doctor keeps telling me I need to lose a few pounds, and when I run more, it happens naturally.

I also want to write more, publish more podcast-type things, and make more music … but I haven’t worked out explicit goals for those yet. That’s OK. This is just Day One.

What new things are you starting in this New Year?