tipping point^{/ (ˈtɪpɪŋ) /} noun: the crisis stage in a process, when a significant change takes place (courtesy Dictionary.com)

I’m teaching myself how to play the guitar. Don’t get me wrong, I have no illusions that I’ll front a grammy-winning rock band anytime in the future. I just want to be able to play some chords along with songs I like.

I’ve been trying to spend less time on social media lately since I have other responsibilities which are more important, and social media for me is a time vampire. I usually start perusing my feed under the guise of checking up on my friends around the country and their various children, artistic endeavors, and funny memes and gifs, but inevitably I end up spending way too much time scrolling my feed and getting nothing meaningful accomplished. What if…

I was sitting at a table with a handful of women, most of them brand-new acquaintances to me as of that morning. The goal was to eat breakfast together and while doing so, go around the table and ask and answer a few, previously chosen questions in the quest to learn more about each other and become better acquainted.

This was my internal dialogue a few nights ago: “When are you going to realize that small, halting steps are just as good as giant leaps, so long as they both take you in the same direction – the direction you want to go? It’s not how fast you get there, so long as you finally get there.”

What do you want more?

That’s the question you have to answer. If you’re trying to make changes in your life to drive yourself toward your goals, you have to decide. Do you want to keep the status quo, or do you want to move forward? What do you want more?

It’s time for another progress report. Life has been BUSY lately. The crazy illness going around had us all knocked down for a couple weeks, and we’re finally digging our way back out. It makes me extremely thankful for the good health we enjoy most of the other times.

Okay. I didn’t want to write a to-do list today. Or more accurately, I didn’t want to follow the to-do list I wrote this morning, and I procrastinated and wrote my to-do list this morning instead of last night. Today seemed like little things everywhere were not going as planned and I have felt anxiety most of the day, especially about my to-do list, which is supposed to lessen my anxiety. That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Here we are, New Year’s Day, January 1, 2019. I’m glad that 2018 is gone. It was a tough year with love, loss, hardship, frustration, and opportunity. I’m thankful for the personal growth I achieved, and for the self-awareness that has started to blossom out of being deliberate with my thoughts and time, but now it’s time to move to the next level. 2018 left me feeling unfulfilled, like there’s more out there.

May I be honest? I hate making resolutions. It’s not that I don’t want to make progress or make positive changes in my life. It’s that when I make resolutions, unless I have a really good idea of how I’m going to actually act out my resolutions, I end up at the end of the year not accomplishing much and feeling like a failure and feeling defeated. Which makes it highly unlikely that I’ll make any more resolutions for the next year. I hate making resolutions because they don’t work.