So long to 2015

It's been over five months since the last time I did anything here on my blog.

I am pretty sure that 2015 set a record of sorts for the least amount of posts at this site and the least amount of visits to the gym.

My goals for 2015:

• Move my body two thousand and fifteen miles(Complete, 2,165 miles)
• Donate platelets fifteen times in 2015(Donated 11 times, gave too frequently and was put on unable to donate list for three months)
• Read a book each month and write a review.(Incomplete, epic fail, within my control). 

Some of the other things that I accomplished in 2015. 

• 4,000,040+ steps as counted by my FitBit watch. This accounted for over 1,825 of the miles for the year. 
• 10,000+ steps, 231 days. 
• Rode my bike a paltry 380 miles. 
• Participated and completed my first NANOWRIMO(National Novel Writing Month, write 50,000 words during the month of November) challenge.    My book still needs an ending and lots and lots of editing before the world is ready to read this book. 
• Wrote at least 750 words every day at 750words.com.  I ended the year with a consecutive days of writing of 406 days at this site. 

Fun things: 

• Happy Patriots fan, finally! 
• Theater
• Les Miserables
• Into the Woods
• Went to see Adam reprise his role of Nicely Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls at the Lakewood Center for Performing Arts seven times. 
• Two episodes of Avenue Q at in Louisville, Colorado
• Three episodes of Dogfight, a very intense play set in the time period of the Vietnam War.
• Dinner with Molly(One of Kelly's sisters). 
• Weekend golf outing with Adam at Grand Lake and Pole Creek.  
• Golfing with Lindsey and Adam
• Went to Vancouver Canada and saw, Once the Musical with Sue(Traffic in Vancouver sucks)
• Spent a night on Whidbey Island in Washington and furiously wrote several thousand words in my novel. 
• Went to a Nuggets game with Laura to see Kobe Bryant for a final time in Denver.
• Seeing Laura get her 100th run shirt with the Irish Snug running club. 
• Touchdowns for Tomorrow Trivia with Laura, Sue and Lindsey. 
• Thanksgiving open house with my niece, Kristin.  She is all kinds of awesome! 
• Adam singing O Holy Night at Burns Methodist church for his grandmother. 

Life things: 

• Accepted a full time position at First Data again as a software analyst. 
• Around the sun one more time. 

On tap for 2016?  

• Hopefully a return to running, not sure what that will look like, but I sure would like to be able to run again and for once it doesn't seem like my knee will be the thing that stops me. 
• Reading on a Nook instead of a physical book.  I have lots of books that I would like to read and looking forward to reading as a writer, paying attention to how a real write tells their story. 
• Ski outing with a friend from work.  I haven't gone skiing since 1999. 
• Golfing with Adam
• Running with Laura

Next month: 

• Participating in Joyful January challenge on Facebook.  Post something every day that brings me joy during the month, on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with a hashtag of #joyfuljan
• Begin to revise my novel, it needs an ending and a lot of work. 
• Set some goals for 2016.  

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Welcome to 2015

I have been thinking about how to welcome in this new year.  I am not a fan of new year's resolutions.  I don't think that making a resolution will effect lasting change.  I think goals and intentions are more effective.

A resolution is weak, a commitment is strong.

You only make commitments for things you can control.

You can make a New Year's resolution to lose weight this year, but you can't commit to it.

However, you can make a commitment to running, cycling, and lifting weight three times a week and eating a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day.

Having said that, here are my goals for 2015.  Over the course of a year the goals may need to be adjusted.  After a year where I ran a grand total of four times, rode my bike outside a total of three times the very first goal I have set may not a realistic goal.  So rather than abandoning an unmet resolution, a goal can be adjusted.  During the years when I was fortunate enough to be able to run marathons, I always had an A race time goal if everything went perfectly, a B race time goal, all the way to a D race time goal.  Over the vastness of running 26.2 miles anything could happen and over the vastness of a year an athletic goal will most likely need some tweaks.  Only once in my running years did I ever exceed a yearly mileage goal so while I can commit to this goal, I will need to stay healthy and avoid the injury bugaboo that has derailed me in the past.

So here are my goals that as I begin this year are in my control.

1. 2015 miles. This can be done either running, cycling, swimming, walking for a total of 2015 miles. I don't care what the medium I use to accomplish this.  Moving forward is the goal. 
2. Read one book a month and write about it here or publish a review on Amazon.
3. Donate platelets fifteen times.

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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Memoirs

Today's writing prompt:  Write the first paragraph of your memoir locating your own story within a larger context.

It was a normal Colorado day in April, overcast with a hint of rain.  Worldwide and at the company I worked at the Information Technology industry was focused on Y2K preparation, file expansions, date windowing, time dimensional testing, code remediation.   Cobol(Common Oriented Business Language) programmers were in high demand.  Many had come out of retirement to cash in on the opportunity and work as highly paid consultants.  Head hunters called weekly, what would it take for you to take another position?   Bonuses were now expected, not the exception.

I was training for my first marathon which was less than five weeks away.   Things were going well at work.  I had time to go for a run during my lunch hour.   I changed into my running clothes and set out to do a six mile run.   I left at 11:15.   I came back to a different world.   It was April 20, 1999.

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Verb Tribe writing class

Creating a sustainable writing practice

I signed up for an on-line writing class for the next 37 days.

I am really excited to see if I can create a sustainable writing practice over the next 37 days.

Day 1 is in the books.

Let's see where this takes me.

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Lost living rooms and Highways

I received this email on Saturday evening from Maya Stein.

Greetings, "Lost Highways & Living Rooms" contributors! I'm excited and delighted to report that the book is finally, finally ready! I've received preliminary copies and I'm thrilled to see your contribution in print at long last. Some of you may have already purchased copies of the book (I just announced it last week on my 10-line Tuesday newsletter), but just in case others have not received word about where to get them, I wanted to direct you to the right place. 

Lost Highways and Living Rooms is a compilation of writing created from Maya Stein's "Tour de Word" workshops in the fall of 2010, as well as contributions from readers of her ongoing 10-line Tuesday weekly poetry newsletter. The two-month tour took Maya on a circumnavigational trip around the United States and parts of Ontario, where she facilitated nearly 30 workshops for children, teens, and adults. Lost Highways & Living Rooms features poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from more than 60 contributors ages 8-80."

Maya Stein publishes an article every Tuesday that contains 10 lines.  10 line Tuesday's.

I started following her back in 2010 and she solicited people that were following her to submit an article for an anthology of stories she was compiling as she traveled across the country.

I wrote something and submitted it for her book and forgot all about it.  I was very excited when I discovered on Saturday that my work, my art is now published.  I am a published author of a short story.  How cool is that and at the same time terrifying?!!

My musing's and thoughts that are published here are read by a small group of people, mostly family and friends and many might not be read at all

Now a story that I wrote, may be read by many and again maybe no one will read it.  The purpose of doing the work, is to do the work and let go of the attachment as to how many will read it, how many will  like it, how many might comment on it, how many might hate it...

The story that I wrote followed Maya Stein's 10 line Tuesday format.  It is a short story and a story that I wrote about Kelly.

I will publish the story that I wrote her on my blog at some point.  For now I am going to savor the fact that I am a contributing author to Maya Stein's anthology series.

I have created art in the world.

This is one of the first articles of  Maya's that I read from her 10 line Tuesday series.

Katrina

"No one really understands the Atlantic

the way k. did - vast, impossible nothingness,

a chilling void where echoes of

island rum jubilation and coconut revelry

nagged like the Sirens, like a playground taunt.

No wonder she hit land so fast,

barreling over the Gulf like a rabid thing,

full of electric yearning for some honest-to-God company,

a sense of brief, knowable longing.

So much like all of us."~Maya Stein

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Messy writing

I redesigned my blog months ago, I don't even know how long it has been.

I have a special page reserved for Kelly and it still sits empty.   I want to write something that is perfect,  and
I know that I can never make it perfect so I do nothing and yet I ache to write about her.  Honor who she is to me.

I have a growing collection of unpublished drafts in my folder.  I write and I don't like what I wrote so they
remain unpublished.

I want to write and then I  find the reasons not to write.  I can't write.  I have writer's block.  I am not creative enough.  It won't be any good.

So now my intention is to write and hit publish, let go of my judgement of not being good enough, of being afraid.

They may be really messy, they may be awful and they will be mine.

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