The Bad News and the Good News: Six Months Have Gone but Six Months Remain

It occurs to me that I might have too many notebooks.  I’m a notebook fiend. Yesterday, when I was in Target, I started to buy a few simply because they looked so fresh and inviting.  I just love notebooks! I have them in three different rooms of our house - the living room, the office, the kitchen.  I guess my thinking is that I’ll be ready when inspiration strikes or I’ll be good to go when I’m ready to wax brilliant.

Alas, these moments don’t happen that often.  They certainly don’t happen often enough to warrant all of these notebooks. Oh, if only they did.

I was cleaning out one of the masses out last night and, as I often do, I came across the beginings of a  post.  I especially love to find a few lines that show how I was worked up over something.  Once, I found a page that said, “I am so freaking annoyed with humanity today I -” It left off there.  I either got over myself really fast, or went on a homicidal binge.

Someone once told me they loved how I didn’t take myself seriously.  How could I ?!

Anyway, the sentences I came across last night read, “Well, it’s July 1st already, you know what that means.”  When I read it, I asked my cat Alexa, “What does it mean?”  Her response was the same as always, “Please feed me or give me something to destroy.”

Then it hit me.  I was starting a post about the Halfway mark of 2008.  I’m sure I was going to mother you about your New Year’s Resolutions - ask you how you’re progressing.  Me?  I’m not sure I want to talk about my resolutions.  I haven’t exactly been hitting them out of the ballpark. 

To be fair to myself, though, life has been particularly cute this year. Aside from our oldest cat losing her site (poor baby), the rest of the problems have just been typcial, feisty stuff - broken washers, multiple freaky car malfunctions, problems with our internet service, having to move to a larger server (more headaches than Tylenol could hope to control), dead coffee makers, the list goes on but if I do, I’ll get depressed.  Suffice to say, life has hurled everything but the proverbial kitchen sink.

Oh, great, I just tempted fate.  This one’s gonna hurt.

I’m going to call my New Year’s Resolutions together for a meeting this afternoon.  It shouldn’t take too long to find them, they’re in one of about 69 notebooks.   It’s actually just a list of goals and “visions” - and, truth be told, I’ve already taken care of quite a few.  I’ve redesigned, revamped, and redone websites and blogs that I’d chosen for makeovers.  I had written down 10 that I wanted to redo before the year was out, and I only have 1 left. 

I’m also sailing along on the goal I set to feed my family healthier meals.  I’m still working on getting them to jump on the green tea bandwagon with me, but they eat their increased fruits and veggies like champs.  I’ve also stopped adding artificial sweetener to my coffee and tea.  I thought that one would be my undoing, but I’m actually drinking coffee black, now, and I prefer it like this.  No more extra calories with whipping cream or half and half and no more extra calories from sugar or extra risks with artificial sweetener.

I’ll take any victory - great or small!

As for the number of books I wanted to have read, I’m waaaaay off schedule.  I read more than the average person, but for a web publisher, I feel like I need to read more.

I’m also frightfully far from the walking guidelines I set for myself.  Apparently my mind and feet got together and convinced themselves that I was only kidding about this one. 

If you have physical proof of your resolutions or just a mental recollection, gather them around the table for a meeting this afternoon.  Find what areas you’re doing well in, what areas you’re doing “okay” in and what areas (like my walking) you’ve totally checked out on.

You may find, as I did, that you need more balance.  It doesn’t take a genius to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of my list and realize that I’m giving more attention to my web publishing world than I am to my fitness regime……and the crowd yells, “WHAT fitness regime?!”  Obnoxious mob. But they’re right.

Someone needs more balance.  Looking at our weaknesses is never any fun, but improving ourselves is.  The thing is, we can never have the latter without the former.  Two years ago, my resolutions were totally opposite.  I walked every single day and actually got my asthma under total control for the first time in my life.  I was up to two miles a day without even getting short of breath. For someone who, growing up, was in the hospital an average of three times a year with chronic asthma, that’s verrrrry good.  My online world was smaller - fewer sites, fewer blogs, fewer things to maintain.  Less work, basically.

Now I just have to find a way to bring both worlds together and balance them out.

It can be done, of course. I just have to make out a schedule and stick to it.   Let me just find a notebook…