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?

There’s a really popular book out right now for women, called Girl, Wash Your Face, by Rachel Hollis, and it’s definitely on my reading list. The book addresses being proactive and going after the goals you want to achieve in life, and I’m all about that in my quest to live intentionally and authentically. Maybe you have read it, maybe you haven’t, but odds are you have heard or read a little bit about a “darker” theme in the book as it pertains to the author’s insistence that not following your diet means you don’t have integrity and that you shouldn’t be trusted. Have you heard about this part? At first blush, this seems like fat shaming and character attacking, but would you like to know something interesting? It’s not either of those things – she’s right.

Here’s a typical interaction between a friend or acquaintance and me. See if any of this sounds familiar. One morning at a mom group leadership meeting recently, a beautiful, sweet friend complimented me on how pretty I looked that day. What was my response? To cringe internally at the thought of how bad I must look on a daily basis and say a quick thanks and then proceed to explain to her how it was my makeup from the night before that I hadn’t washed off yet because I’m cheap.

I will never admit to possessing boundless physical grace and coordination. In fact, I have had more than my share of embarrassing, uncoordinated moments. I regularly drop things, walk into walls, run into parked objects with a car (that’s another post for another day), you get the idea. I’d like to share a couple of my experiences with you partly because I think they’re hilarious in hindsight, and in hopes that we can all learn something about the power of humor, intentional laughter and self-awareness.

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Strange.

Emotions stare blankly back at you in a convoluted reflection. Nothing is there.

But sometimes, a wave. Sometimes gentle and lovely and fragrant as balmy summer fields. Sometimes so fierce you exhale in torrents and roughly gasp in the thin atmosphere of agony.

A wave of what? Nostalgia? Remembrance? Reverence? Loss? Love? Hate? Anger?