Another year gone by

Well, here it is, December 31 once again. I looked at last year's December 31 post and re-read all the things I intended to get done this year...and none of them got done.

I started to say "that's the bad news" but I balked--I don't think of it as bad news. The story that was going to be done by the end of January because it was no more than a novella, a story 30-40 pages long, wouldn't stop growing, until now I think it might run 250-300 pages. How did that happen? Basically, I kept digging into it, trying to understand the world of its setting. I've worked on it all year long, when life didn't kidnap me, and it's really come together.

Some things I planned on doing didn't happen--I didn't actually do anything concrete on the school front, though I did find a nearby school that offers an undergraduate degree in religious studies. That's the option I want to explore (though it baffles the beloved).

Other things that I didn't plan on did occur--my two other blogs. Somewhere along the line, I decided it made sense to divvy up my thought processes, that I shouldn't have a mishmash of stuff going on. So I have the writing blog for my writing life, a reading blog for what I'm reading, and this place for everything else.

So where do I want to be this time next year? I really want a finished book under my belt. I really want to come to the end of a story I wrote, and know it's done. (Yeah, it'll have to be revised, but that's small potatoes, relatively speaking.)

Other than that, things are good. I think I've finally found balance on the weight front--I gained a little weight over the holidays but I haven't wigged out about it: at long last, I know I'll take it off again. Exercise has been spotty and a struggle, but I'll get that back on track. I have a haircut I dislike, but I'll get that fixed; at least I love the color.

Do I feel like I've come far this past year? Not really, but I suppose I must have if I can gain a little weight and get iffy on going to the gym without freaking out and beating myself up. That's actually pretty huge...but I also think I've been moving toward this moment in tiny little steps, so it doesn't feel like a huge change.

So something that I struggled with for a long time is less of a struggle, maybe no struggle at all. I wish that for everyone: that the struggles stop being such struggles.

Happy New Year.

Sometimes A Great Notion

When your car is piled high with snow, it's hard to make yourself get up in the dark to go to the gym. Well, it's hard to make yourself get up in the dark to go to the gym in general; the snow is just a bit of additional de-motivation.

That was my situation this morning. My bedroom was cool, but my bed was toasty; outside it was really cold, and my bed was really toasty. So I couldn't get my little self to the gym first thing this morning. Then, when I got out of bed, I still didn't want to trundle off to the gym.
Fortunately, over the last five or six months, I've built up a tiny collection of free weights, enough to give myself a reasonable small-muscle (biceps, triceps, shoulders) workout.

My trainer groups things, working pairs of areas. The pairs change, so sometimes it's front of body (biceps and chest) one workout, then back of body (back and triceps) the next. Sometimes it's pushing (chest and triceps), then pulling (back and biceps). Right now, we're on a big muscle (chest and back)/small muscle (bicep and tricep) cycle, and today was a small muscle day.

So what did I do? Worked out in the comfort of my own home.

If I hadn't bought my few free weights I wouldn't have been able to do it. But sometimes you get a good idea, you execute it...and it continues to pay off for a long time.

A Little Whine

I want to whine, and I don't want to whine to myself.

I hate my hair and I think I've definitely gained weight--my face looks fatter in pictures.

And as soon as I write that, as soon as I attempt to launch myself into "waaahhhh" mode, a sane, sensible voice says, "Oh, stop. You're fine," and a sense that this is where I am, in a place where what I weigh isn't something I need to be happy or unhappy about, grounds me. My eating is mostly under control. I have bad days, but I eat to allow for them, because I know I'll have them. That takes a lot of the pressure off, all around. My exercise schedule is settling down, after some fairly maddening struggles. Even when I have bad weeks, it's okay. I'm back in the place where I recognize that this is my whole life, the whole journey, not some crazy race where if I don't achieve X by Y date, I've failed.

As for my hair, I love the color, but I'm not loving the cut. That's not dissing my hairdresser--I picked the cut. It's a fairly blunt cut semi-bob, and I suspect my hair's too thick for it. So I'm thinking about cutting it again, into a kind of wedge-ish thing, something I had a couple of years ago and really loved. This, in fact:

It's easy and fun, and I kind of miss it.

We'll see.

At least I love the color (which is different than when I had the above picture taken).