This winter hit me harder than most. We just finished up our birthday season and we are settling into the longer days and the warmer air…kinda. But my motivation, my drive to get things done seems to be far away and off track. The darkness of winter is lingering hard in the Northwest. The days are getting a little longer but the gloom is in full effect. I am trying to get ready for all of what comes next, yet I seem to be spinning in circles, chasing a tail that doesn’t exist. I am making my to do lists yet I seem to push most things off until tomorrow or next week. It all feels exhausting and never ending.

The New Year has arrived. The holiday celebrations are memories of the past. The new year awaits us with a new daily planner and a fresh start. There is an excitement to the turning of the calendar, to the changing dates. I love taking some time to take a deep breath and reflect on the past year. All the places and experiences I was able to have, I spend some time shifting my focus from “fuck that was hard,” to “I am so lucky to be me.” As I close the chapter of the passing year, it is time to set goals for what lies ahead knowing it is only an outline of all that will unfold. With that, I open a bottle of champagne and begin planning adventures, prioritizing what matters right now and knowing every plan can be derailed for the best of circumstances and the worst.

As this year makes it way to the finish line, I am overwhelmed with the shifts this year brought.  The year has taken so many turns I don’t even have a road map for where I’ve gone or who I’ve become.  There were moments I wanted to fast forward to the end.  And moments I wanted to hold onto and stay longer.  There were highs that touched the sky and lows that pulled me so far down I wasn’t sure I could get back up.  There were stresses that kept me up all night and celebrations that couldn’t put me to sleep.  I think I am ready to say goodbye to this year.  Looking back on it is quiet the memory.

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal of volunteering.  I have been living between Port Townsend and Tacoma for the past 2 1/2 years and I am feeling disconnected from both.  In Port Townsend I have my home.  I have my minis and my bestest friends.  I have my gym and my favorite walks. I have my girls nights and my family dinners.  Tacoma is my weekend escape.  I have quiet and trashy tv.  I have my partner and my house.  I have happy hour and errands.  But the chaos of being neither here nor there has left me feeling a little lost and ungrounded.  So I thought long and hard about what I should do to volunteer.  I started with my strengths, I love to walk, I love to be outside and I am very strong.  And then I thought about what I wanted.  I wanted to commit to a few hours on the weekend.  I wanted to be around people but also give my social battery some recharge.  I wanted to feel good about my time and connect with my community.

I got sucker punched by life.  And when I thought I could stand back up, life kicked my feet from underneath me and landed me flat on my ass.  I have a lot to say but very little time to sit down.  Every time I see a deep breath in my future, life jumps in and sucks the air out before I can reach it.  Don’t worry, I will break down the lows of the past two months.  I’ll lay out the frustrations and the exhaustion.  But I will finish each of my defeats with the reason I keep on keeping on.  Bad stuff doesn’t always happen in threes, sometimes it’s fives and sevens.  Sometimes you hit the end of your rope only to find out you are still falling.  The end of shit isn’t in sight.  The weight of all of this can feel unbearable.  But people keep picking up my scraps and giving me enough relief to keep on keeping on.

I am too old for a soap box.  I have learned that life has too many variables for my way to be the right way.  In the world of training, there are far more right ways to do things than wrong ways.

And lately nutrition, supplements and Ozempic have been topics floating around the studio.  I am by no means neutral in my opinions, but I am open minded and understand that decisions someone makes for themselves is not my choice nor is it my place to put judgement on them.  Medical stimulants and surgeries have been around for a very long time.  Nutritional education/miseducation and crash diets have been around for even longer.  But ultimately it is a journey that we each must make on our own.

Most months I sit down to write my blog with the idea that life and fitness parallel each other on almost every level.  I think about the conversations I have and I think about the experiences I encounter.  I use them as a starting point.  From there I try to merge the two together.  Bringing my life and my studio into synchronicity that not only fills my joy of writing, but also reminds me of how lucky I am.  Life has a way of unfolding in ways we can’t predict nor can we anticipate.  We have to live through it.  We have to experience it as we go.  And we have to hope our story is filled with enough happiness and laughter to dilute the bad times.

Time is something we value.  We plan for it, we try to catch it, we try to contain it.  Time is a blink of the eye as much as it is a 10 hour work day.  It moves at a pace that is both consistent and variable.  It can carry the power to heal and it can carry the power to bring us to absolute frustration.  We can wait, we can predict, we can hope…but only time will tell.  There are those days we barely missed a ferry or the bridge opened right as we turned the corner.  The commute where traffic won’t move and the highway is a parking lot of cars.  The quick trip to the grocery store for that one item where the lines seem to be at a standstill.  These are moments that press on own patience.  Sometimes we might want to yell at anyone that can hear.  Sometimes we might want to storm out or honk our horn to the never ending sea of cars.  In those moments, I tend to see my time as more valuable than any logic.  When in actuality, my life is pretty amazing and these slow downs are mere inconveniences in my day.   

I thrive on predictability and order.  I find calm in a house that is clutter free and clean.  My car has never been a storage place of wrappers and coffee cups.  And if you have ever been in the studio, there is a place for EVERYTHING.  The boxes, the straps, the dumbbells and of course the kettlebells, all have a home.  I have been known to rearrange these things mid class when they are out of place.  There is an order to my every day life that makes me unique and also very happy.  I almost never lose stuff and I purge at least twice a year.  I find it very hard to veer away from this normalcy.  But it is important to challenge myself to get uncomfortable.  Maybe let the house get dirty for a week.  Or let the clean laundry pile up.  Even though I love staying in the comfort zone it is very important to check in with myself and make sure that this need for consistency isn’t holding me back from what may lie ahead.

I feel a little behind getting my blog written.  The month of January wasn’t quite what I had expected or planned for.  It was a month of emotions and a badly broken finger/hand that made most things in life challenging.  There was freezing weather and icy roads.  There were dark days and way too many layers.  I had long phone calls and a fair amount of tears.  The end of the month left me feeling exhausted and discouraged.  This was not how the year was supposed to start.  This was not in my New Years Goals.  Instead of getting down about the whole thing I decided to restart.  January 30th kicked off the beginning of our birthday season and it also started my year in the direction I needed.  I saged my soul and brought in some bright and healing thoughts for my New Year.  I cleansed my energy and started with some blue skies and a new attitude.