Month: January 2016

The Blizzard of 2016

It’s been a little over a week since Winter Storm Jonas slammed us here in Maryland and yet, there’s still a lot of white stuff on the ground.  Craziness. One week it feels like spring and the next we’re getting hammered by a blizzard. Being a snow lover, I was thrilled to finally be getting some snow this year. For a while, it seemed like we weren’t going to get any. When I heard we might get somewhere between one and two feet, I felt like a giddy little kid again. I grew up in the country and loved playing in the snow. We made snow cream, built forts and igloos, had snowball fights, hiked through the woods, went sleighing, bravely walked out on the frozen ponds, and even hitched our homemade sleds behind the horses and let them pull us along. How could anyone not love winter? It just doesn’t seem like winter without any snow. Well, needless to say, Jonas delivered and I loved it.

I’d be happy with at least one big storm like Jonas every year. It’s also nice to have a few extra snow days off from work. The one thing about snow storms that I could do without is… snow shoveling of course. This was the first time I’ve had to dig my vehicles out of deep snow in a few years. After the first Jonas wave, I spent three and a half hours shoveling around my vehicles as well as several vehicles belonging to my neighbors. After the second Jonas wave, I spent two more hours digging us all out again. On the third day, after Jonas had passed, I spent another hour shoveling. It’s literally taken me about a week to fully recover from those snow shoveling workouts.

It was sad to see the snow melting and the temperatures up in the 50s again so quickly but there are still a couple of months of winter left so who knows what winter still has in store for us. Personally, and even as sore I was for a couple of days after all of that shoveling, I would love to get another big snow storm or two before winter ends. Perhaps it’s that giddy kid in me but I enjoy snow now just as much as I ever have and I don’t see that changing anytime soon so bring on the white stuff!  Frosty can’t be done yet…

* The first picture in this post is the night it began to snow.  The second picture is the sunset the day it stopped snowing.

James

Recommitting to my New Year’s Resolutions…

I’m not going to lie, we’re a little over two weeks into the New Year and I’m struggling to get into a groove with my New Year’s resolutions. I find myself contemplating strategies like… if I don’t reach my writing, workout, or weight loss goals for the day or week, I’ll make up for it another day, next week, or the following week, as long as I reach my cumulative monthly goals. Acknowledging this in writing, yes, I feel like a slacker. While I’d give myself a C+ as far as sticking to my goals so far, it’s going to take quite a bit more discipline on my part to bring that grade up to an A.

The first week of January I didn’t know what to expect or how I would feel in my attempts to meet my weekly goals. I met 90% of my writing goals, met my weight loss goal, and worked out four of the five times I had planned but, I wasn’t satisfied because I still fell short. The second week, my grade slipped from a C+ to a D. I met 75% of my writing goals, gained back the weight I lost in the first week, and only worked out three of five days.

While I’m determined to remain positive, I’ve definitely had moments during the past week when I’ve been hard on myself. I know I can do better. I know I just need to make it happen. I know I need to be better at managing my time. I know I need to stop staying up so damn late, go to bed earlier, get more sleep, eat better, and write, write, write.

I’ve also started consciously reflecting on the way my mind works when I make excuses for myself or when I attempt to come up with justifications as to why I’m doing something other than trying to accomplish the goals I’ve set for myself. My top excuse has clearly been… I’m too tired. I know it sounds cliché but I’m just keeping it real.

I’m a night owl by nature and love to stay up late while the rest of the world is asleep to catch up on my shows or social media. I do this even though I know that in order for me to get to work by six A.M., I really need to start DVRing my shows and watching them the next day or whenever I have time later. Since many of my shows are on Sundays, I typically get off to a pretty shaky start on Mondays after having only four or five hours of sleep. That in turn, leads to me being exhausted when I get home from work on Mondays, and sets the tone for a vicious cycle that I’m usually not able to recover from until around Thursday. By then, I’ve only worked out once or twice, haven’t been able to focus like I should, have been putting off my goals, have been hard on myself and/or feeling guilty for not being more disciplined with my time management, and have started procrastinating and trying to figure out strategies to make up for everything I’ve missed over the upcoming weekend.

This stops now.

This is my catchup week. Not only am I going to accomplish all of my weekly goals this week, I’m going to catchup on the ones I’ve failed to fulfill for the past two weeks.  Wish me luck!

With that said, I’m off to the gym…

James

Happy 2016 and Happy New Year!

Once again it’s that time of year when we reflect back on the past year and think of the goals we accomplished, the goals we didn’t quite reach, and the memorable life-experiences we may have had. Perhaps the end or beginning of a job, the end or beginning of a relationship, travel to an exotic place, the relief of completing a degree or certification, losing the thirty extra pounds we managed to gain since graduating college, paying off a loan, the death of a family member or friend, celebrating a new marriage or a divorce, buying or selling a home, receiving the news of someone close who’s been diagnosed with cancer, succumbed to it, or conquered it… these are the moments that linger at the forefront or our memories when we look back on the past year.

Naturally, many of us make one or more well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions. I’m one of those people. I even make a list of goals every year. Some of which I accomplish and others that inevitably end up right back on my list the following, or every, January. The resolutions and goals I set for myself typically revolve around being healthier (lose weight, work out more, eat healthier, etc.), taking classes, finishing a degree or certification, paying off bills and saving more money, writing and reading more, completing writing projects, getting published, making more time for the things I enjoy doing (kayaking, riding my motorcycle, bicycling, hunting, fishing), and traveling to places I’ve never been to before. Now that I think about it, I feel selfish and foolish that they all seem very self-centered.

Seeing as how I haven’t yet made my list of goals for 2016, I’m going to approach it differently from now on. For every self-centered resolution or goal I create, I will also create one centered around the following: spending more time with family and friends, meeting and getting to know new people, reconnecting with family and friends that I haven’t seen in years, finding ways to help others in need, and volunteering for charity and charitable events.

In June I’ll be 45 years old. I feel extremely privileged to have experienced the past 44 years on this planet and while I may not be wealthy or have all of my wants, I have it better than most people and have come to understand and believe that if we have the ability to improve upon the lives of others and for the greater good, then we should do so whenever and wherever possible.

As I wrote earlier, these will be “well-intentioned” resolutions and goals. Given my track record over the past few years, it’s unlikely that I will accomplish all of them but I will damn sure put one hell of a good dent in them… bring on 2016!

James