GOAL...Time to get started

“What you get by achieving your goals is to as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

(Zig Ziglar)

Sun beaming down cool breeze blowing- it is summer time in Texas. There is so much potential as I step from the steps of the school.  Every day I wake and the day is mine to decide what I feel like getting accomplished.  Free from the normal schedule I must set my goals and make the right decisions.  It seems so simple- I guess it really is. 

The struggle of reaching for goals are daily battles of the mind.  The body at rest wants to stay that way.  There is a war waging in my head as I step off that curb.  Would be so nice to go home take a long nap and wake up in the morning.  Would love to read and not move from that spot for as long as my body can take it.  Would love to stop at the store and buy the largest ice cream and pack of cookies the store has and call it dinner.  I know these feel amazing because I have done them all.  I loved it in the moment- then the bloating, stiff muscles, weight gain sit at the other end of these indulgences.  I hope in the truck and instead go to the gym.  This summer will be magical, I declare to myself.  I will come out the other side transformed from my journey.

First step:  Set goals.
I love list.  I love checking stuff off list the most.  I have been know to do something just to find it was not on the list so I add it just so I can cross it off.  Goals flow naturally. 

1. I will lose 40 pounds by the end of August. 
2. I will finish the rough draft of the novel I have been slaving over.  I will revise it and send it off for publishing.  
3. I will purge my cluttered house of all things I don't need.  (This one is the most over whelming.) 

Second step: Break it down.
There has to be a starting place and smaller steps to get this all accomplished.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  This is the daily action that I am pledging to you to accomplish every day. 

1. Exercise 5 days a week.  Eat a high fiber low fat diet.  Track calories. I have been working on this goal for many years.  I find creating accountability makes everything way more easy. Set your virtues as a social network status.  I am pretty sure that it is a whip to all my friends who read them but they will celebrate with you and encourage you when you slip.  www.sparkpeople.com is a free calorie counting site that is amazing!  
2. I must and will write every day.  The goal is five thousand words a week.  I write very slowly- a by product of dyslexia but worth the effort.  By achieving this I will have the book complete by the end of July.  Again it takes a village to build greatness. I consider myself a writer and I share those dips and successes with everyone.  It has the most amazing by product.  People start asking about this book you are working on and how much further.  It shames you back to it, if you have let it sit for too long. 
3. Must break it down.  First the living room.  The mail that has sat, files that need to be gone through and dusting that has been ignored for too long are top of the list.  Then the bedrooms- purge the closets, and dig through those drawers.  Donate what you can and throw out the rest.  Then garage and back storage the most scary due to the increased likelihood of finding spiders.  

I pledge to you to tag every post from here on out with the daily progress of my goals.  I will share the falls the celebrations. I am ready change.  I want to share this journey with you. Comment with your own goals. Your wins and falls.   

1. Worked out hour and a half.  Walked the dog one mile. Eating in the acceptable range.
2. Wrote 250 words.
3. Cleaned the kitchen...okay I did nothing for this goal. 

End of the School Year

High-fives, a pat on the back and random hugs mark the end to another school year.  This week is so different from those in my memory.  Physical anticipation fought with the relief from being finished with exams.   The thrill of months of solid sleeping late use to all be kicked off in a paper snow storm as students ran from the school building.  I am now on the other side.  Instead there is a flurry of last minute meetings, angry emails anxious to help little Johnny pass and writing the fifty page final exam with all the reviews and answer keys for each ability level.

Each year comes with greater speed.  The students, my children for a year, leave.  The few that return arrive as strangers.  Little chubby smooth faces full of braces are transformed into defined, angular adults.  The individual groups of stories have melted into a solid lump- no longer able to be pulled from the others.  This first shocked and saddened me when it first started to happen.  The mind making room for more clumping those you hold dear and letting the rest go. 

Introspection hits me every May.  I wish other situations in our life had such clear cut beginnings and ends.  We could look back at the last year as a platform to move forward for the  following year? Instead we have this jumble of restarts and half ends.  It is only months later that we ask ourselves why?  In life there is much rushing here doing, cleaning, getting, meeting but not just letting go.  This summer that will be my first order of business.

My goal- let go of the weight that I have carried and added to over the last 35 years.  Let go of the clutter that has consumed my house.  (Although I am not exactly a candidate for the show Hoarders it is still bad.)  Let go of the time killers that eat away at my life.  In all of this letting go- I will live.

Bad Day

Horoscope told me, 'have a scoop of ice cream and stay in bed.'  It is sad when the cosmos confirm haunting thoughts that have tailed you all day.

Woke up in sweat, the air conditioner struggling to keep up to the raw Texas summer didn't improve as I went about my morning routine.  Walked out of the house without my inhaler, pretty sure I can blame the heat made me dizzy with thoughts of getting to the cool comfort of the truck.  Drove to work in a daze.  Looking back probably due to a lack of oxygen.  The school district in a play to save money does not heat nor cool the hallways- great for asthma.  After lunch went to chat with a friend, friendship has a way of hitting that reset button on a bad day.  She got news that her Grandfather, a young 89, has declared himself too old to travel and has canceled the family vacation. 

Unwilling I was back at my Grandmother's house listening to the delicate breaths from her hospital bed. Breaths, turned to soft whimpers morphing to moans of discomfort and aggravation that reverberate around the room.  I didn't want to bother her.  Didn't want to grab her frail hand.  Didn't want to say good-bye in hopes it would make her stay till I was ready.  She didn't wait.  When something huge happens in your life your brain takes it in then lets you deal with it in smaller chunks.  Grief can swallow you whole.  Grandmother passed two years ago yet I still get flashes of intense sadness and regret.  Witnessing my friend go through the first stages of the letting go brought it all back with a cruel intensity.

I carry an image of myself as bent over- back loaded with bags feet stumbling trying to find footing up a steep almost impossible mountain.  Seems many times that my friends, coworkers and everyone around me are on this same route but their load is smaller and they are flying past me.  I've seen some that don't have to carry a thing and are being carried instead..  I fight with the twelve year old urge to shout at them that this is not fair but they have already left me here alone.  Is it their fault that my burden is so much?  Is it their fault that they don't carry a burden?  Maybe instead of shouting at them I should be going through my baggage and throwing some off the mountain.  I stand looking at the bags I have carried with love and determination and cannot pick which one has to go.  Instead I stand on the mountain crying wishing someone would help me pick up my pack and keep climbing. 

Maybe I'll just go to bed, after a scoop of ice cream.

A Day in My Shoes

Every morning my eyes fight to open but my mind is clear.  In relaxation my thoughts are churning through fantasies, day dreams, news stories, conversations and quotes working through the patterns fitting them into stories. I peck out top ones on the notes on my phone once they become so sticky they refuse to let go of me. Waiting till the last minutes click across the clock I am cling to those numbers every morning.

Running late is how I typically start the day.  Rushing, sweaty faced I pack myself in the truck for my daily hour commute to work.  There is great balance in the daily commute.  Driving the same route everyday allows for autopilot, driving subconsciously muscle memory takes over.  Looking over to my neighbors on the road I write their story in my head.

Sipping coffee John chokes on the ringing phone coughing as he looks over seeing her number pop up.  Side things had their place. 


Why had she stayed the night?  How was she going to explain this?  Her husband had to know.  Brushing on more concealer would do nothing.

Some times the stories stay and build as the miles roll by my window.  It is pulling in the parking lot I take a minute add to the notes app on my phone. 

Walking into the school, the smell of cleaner and sweaty teens have forever attached to the walls.  Smiles and hellos break me from thoughts that have consumed my last hour. Doing something you love is a gift not everyone has the opportunity to celebrate.  I love teaching. Seventh graders are in an evil battle between adulthood and childhood.  Unfortunately we all know who will win but the battle rages on.  In a single day I will have to say "stop pulling your shorts up to your shoulders, spit that out, what do you mean your fingers are stuck, are you sure some one took your chewed up pencil?" I wouldn't have it any other way. 

The day ends and it is a rush to get out of the parking lot and to the gym before 'she' gets there. If traffic catches us then it is women's locker room doom.  We throw on clothes in a flurry of action- both us elbowing to get done and out of there first.  If we fail...we are trapped.  The bush lady will corner us in another awkward conversation while she walks about naked and we desperately try to escape without appearing rude, because that would go against Southern upbringing. Once free it is a bevy of beautiful men, sweating, grunting and burning muscles. Concentration on form, pulling, pushing, and don't forget to breathe flood my brain with endorphins.  Two hours later and back on the road to another commute. 

The yeng to the early morning yang.  Relaxation sweeps over me.  Instead of developing secret stories for my highway neighbors I let the music fill me and search the roadside for natures treasures.  Sitting still is a just a part of the ride home.  I photograph my treasures eager to share or hoard them for myself. Pulling into my neighborhood the stress of the day melts away I know it is only minutes from the time I will be in my perch with my sweet laptop finding my inner flow plugging in the snapshots the day has revealed.  Some times flow spills from me fluid like rain, other days it sputters stumbling over misspelled words and disconnected images.  In all of it there is happiness. 

Back on Track

The track belt feels good beneath my running shoes.  The smell of  hot men, and running machines fills my still congested lungs. I'm still clinging to the cough that kept me out of the gym last week.  It is not wall shattering having evolved to a dry rasp of annoyance. Still rude not to cover it, but barely worth the effort.

My workout partner is undaunted by my hacking and has mastered the art of ignoring it.  Favoring instead to bark orders- corrections in form and challenges to my counting, which admittedly can some times be inflated based on my mood.  She is exactly what I need.

Working toward any goal you can count on stumbling. It is not about if, it but rather a question of when.
Getting sick, working exhausting hours, family situations can all be used to hold us back or to drive us onward. Working out clears my mind, sets the mood for the day focusing me on what is important.

A fellow patron at the gym wanting to be helpful asked my buddy and myself once what our goal was?  Was it to build bulk or to build long lean muscle.  She adjusted the ginormous amount of weight we had set up for ourselves to a third of what we had and showed that slow and deliberate movements are what we want to use to carve our bodies.  The fellow patron has probably long forgotten the question.  The encounter spoke to me.  Her question is one that can be used for many areas of life.  When eating, shopping, writing, living- is it bulk and the itch to gather bulk that drives us or is it the drive to have lean figures, and meaningful text. Since speaking to that patron I have tried to focus on those words as I work each muscle.  Focusing on being lean in my actions for the day and those at the gym. I have sweat over words, pulling slow to find meaning rather then extraneous fluff. 

This is not the first time I have lived this lesson.  Not long ago I found myself in a hungry scramble to get, to have and to do more.  I was desparate to change careers, getting my MBA so I could count myself successful with all the stuff that would be the jewels in my crown.  Angry with my position I went to Botswana working with a travel company to present a possible partnership- a step to the goal.

Driven around in expensive German cars, to five star resorts made me feel empty.  It was stepping out on to the open national lands surrounded by the unpredictable wild that brought me home.   On one of the evening safaris our group spotted two lions, 'the boys', were a short distance from our camp. After good fellowship with locals and local dinner we all retreated to our tents.  Laying in bed the night breeze licked at my bare feet.  My chest began to rumble, the boys were close.  Blowing out my light, still blind to the world outside my tent I listened.   The boys entered the water, exiting to the dry land behind my tent.  The low rumble got close, and the licking of their mouths, the dripping of the water rolling off their coats boomed feet away.  Looking, straining to see behind my tent they were doing the same.  Walking over, sitting next to my tent, they were curious.  They leaned in to smell. My limbs shook I still don't know if it was fear or their constant rumble.  Holding my breath we all waited.  As if taken on the wind they were gone, nothing but the dream of it remained.  Sitting next to raw unrestrained power, was like being in the presence of God.  I found myself not worried about the having more, it was about the moment. I worried about breathing, being.  Nothing else was left.  Lean living was and is my concern not how much more could I have or get.

Maybe it wasn't sickness it was worse...

Sweats have left days ago but the wheezing hacking cough remains.  After several wall shaking days of endless hacking my friends stepped up to me in a great intervention worthy of A&E cameras and asked me go the doctor.  Their genuine care and empathy finally pulled at me enough to do it.  

The doctor, new to me, was as sweet as could be.  She questioned me about my asthma. Having never been diagnosed with asthma there was initial confusion.  Apparently my friends might have been right, a person should be able to breathe with out feeling like you are going to die.  Alright, a week into the new medication and cannot say that I feel any better. Stepping outside feels like my lungs are in a vice and the coughing kicks back up.  I want to get out, to walk and get back to the gym.  How do I do those things when I am still struggling to breathe? I watch calories and hope for the best.  Next week I will see the doctor again maybe there can be some type of adjustments and I can get back into that gym.

Reaching for More Than One Dream at a Time

Five weeks of discipline- work, workout and write all fell apart this week.  I tried to muscle in a workout even when my eyes were tearing and my nose was running.  The writing was a hopeless.  Laptop sat there empty screen before me but my mind was fogged with drugs and that blasted right eye would not stop running.  Two days in to the snafu (as I like to call getting sick) and I completely abandon the workouts and writing.  The wheezing was keeping me up, stronger drugs made the others pail in comparison to the full on fog my mind was sitting inside of.  Struggling to spell my own name much less work on any creative endeavour I resorted to sleep. 

Can barely remember those days even tho it was this last week.  I am okay, survived even when it felt like it might be touch and go there for a while.  It is okay, life needs these slow downs to recharge.  Sometimes when you are so focused on achieving your goals it is easy to get lost in that struggle.  Recharging is good for the soul.  Reminded of where I want to be; of why my health is so important I am ready to go forward.  Reservation at the gym is made for almost everyday next week.  Not to over do it, but to keep moving.  The fog has been burned away by the glorious sun and my stupid right eye has dried up, so I come to share my struggle with all of you.