Has anyone else out there felt like they were messing their kids up – like someday you’ll be receiving bills in the mail for your kids’ therapy? Do you have days where you feel like either you or your kids won’t survive through the day? Or is it just me?

Trigger warning: sensitive content

Do you think it’s your job to fix everyone? Or just one or two people? Do you think that other people’s happiness is dependent upon you and what you do or say or how you act?

So I had these thoughts on Sunday:

Have you ever hidden from your kids in plain sight? I never have.

I lied.

Are there any train lovers out there? Specifically, are there any tunnel lovers out there? I absolutely love tunnels. I love everything about them – their darkness, cave-like qualities, echoes, and the fact that almost always, there is literally a light at the end. I have driven through tunnels dug into mountains, giant underground tunnels carrying foot and automobile traffic underneath large cities, and I have walked through tunnels underneath streets and carved into the trunks of giant redwoods in California. The whole concept of tunnels and their different types fascinates me. Plus, echoes, amiright?

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.

So let’s talk about health and fitness.

Yes, two days before Christmas. I’m not going to lie, I have hesitated to write about my story because it’s very raw, personal, and I have to get pretty vulnerable. So what the heck, why not share it with the world, right?

I went on a trip by myself this past weekend for the first time since having kids. It was the first time I had flown in over ten years, so I was a little nervous, but excited. I like flying – the airport people watching, the convenience, the ability to sit and rest or read or listen to music while launching hundreds of miles per hour toward your destination, shimmery city lights glistening in the inkwell below, orange and pink cotton candy clouds with nothing but blue sky above. There’s nothing quite like witnessing dark, jagged mountains silhouetted against a radiant sunset or seeing chains of lakes which resemble the water droplets leftover on the sink after brushing your teeth.