Rut? RUT? RUT??!!

"Deciding to lose weight means actually stepping on a scale to see where you are starting. I don't recommend this part.

Eek! I have really enjoyed the holidays!!

And it's not over until Monday...today was just to get the baseline for next Friday. But I have banana bread to make and eat and Pepper Box to have and maybe BBQ....Best to start really high so it looks like a bigger accomplishment right??"

This was my status from last year. If you make just the barest of tweaks (I made the banana bread yesterday) it could be a repeat today. We had Pepper Box for breakfast, we will have BBQ for dinner, I ate a ton of junk food and yummy goodness over the holiday knowing full well that I still need to lose weight come Monday. I even stepped on the scale this morning to see what the damage was and eek!

I have noticed this a lot with the "On this Day" review from Facebook. I do the same things over and over again. And every once in awhile I feel a little weird about it. When someone asks me what I have been doing lately and I have nothing new to share. If it's hockey season, I went to a hockey game or am going to a hockey game. If it's football season I am watching football. If there is a musical in town I am going to that. If it's February or March I am going to, returning from or planning to go to Hawaii. I eat at the same restaurants for the most part, a few new here and there, I even order the same things most of the time. I work out at the same gym, I live in the same house. And when people tell me I'm boring, or I'm in a rut sometimes I think they might be right.

But then I think again.

I believe the point to life is to figure out what makes you happy. And I've found things that make me happy. I like hockey. I like football. I like Pepper Box. I like BBQ. I like the gym. Okay, well, I don't like the gym, but I like being able to do the other things I do like as pain free as possible so that means I tolerate the gym.

So one person's rut is another person's happy space. I've found the things that make me happy and I do them. A lot.

So where does that bring me now? Well it's the first of the year and to make sure that my happy space doesn't become too confining I have my goals to set.

(Okay so that doesn't really dovetail but we can sand and spackle that later to get a better fit)

Books-- I've decided on 60. Seems a good number. Just over one a week. Gives me space to read some longer works, doesn't make me feel like I need to do a sweep of the board books section to catch up. This one I wouldn't even worry about but Goodreads does their yearly challenge and I honestly hate having a blank space instead of goal greet me every time I log in.

Weight/fitness--I am going to keep up with the gym, pretty much at the pace I've been doing all year. I really do need to lose those 10 pounds that I've needed to lose for a year. I still haven't figured out how I am going to do that, but I am going to do that. Really. I mean it. Though without a plan of attack it's going to be complicated. Leaning toward trying out the Mediterranean style diet and see if that works for me. Now that I've been cooking more maybe it won't seem as daunting as it has in the past.

Picture of the Day--I know, I know. I talked about how this didn't bring me the joy that it did before because Facebook tweaked it and I don't get the interaction I used to. Well, I decided that I don't care. I'm not using the Fat Mum Slim prompted pictures. I'm going back to the original way I did it, which was just taking a picture during the day and posting it with a little story as to why it made picture of the day. And if you all decide to comment, great, that's more fun, but if you don't, that's fine as well. I still made the point to take the shot, to think about what it means to me and to put it out there.

Which brings us to the writing...

So in the past I've set goals of number of blogs to post by the end of the year. Number of fiction pieces vs. number of non-fiction pieces and in more than one year to have something published by year end. Which is a horrible soul crushing goal. It's really awful. I mean really awful. You send out a piece and most of the time you don't hear a word back. Nothing. Zip. Nada. You don't even know if anyone read the piece. If they sort of liked it. Sort of hated it. Laughed at you. Nothing. And the whole time your goal of getting published slips away. Which is why it's a horrible goal to set. I cannot control that at all. So this year my goal isn't to be published. It's to submit pieces to be published. See the difference? I cannot control if they will be published, but I can control if I submit anything. I am going to submit 6 pieces. Yes, I know, that seems like a lot, but I write A LOT. Like more than you all even see, and you see a lot of it. So 6 pieces. To contests, to journals, online, magazines, publishing houses. Any place that accepts pieces I will consider. Six pieces by the end of the year. Just submitting. I have no control over the next part, but I have control over mine.

And that brings us to the last goal of the year.

This is more like a standard New Year's Resolution, which I normally stay away from. Those are typically such nebulous things. I like goals. Concrete, do x get y sort of things. But this one I see looming and I really want to make it top of mind for me in the coming year. I cannot control the world around me. I can only control how it affects me. That's it. I need to remember as we hit what is going to be an ugly political year that stupidity and hatred are going to be out there, but I don't have to carry it with me. I need to remember that not everyone is going to be kind, but that doesn't mean that there aren't kind people out there. I need to remember that your opinion of me is your opinion of me and I have no control over that. I only have control over myself. Over what I think. Over what I do. Over how I feel. And that is all I can do.

And if that means that my life looks like a rut to the outside world then that's okay.

I like my rut. It's a pretty sweet groove to be in.