As the year continues with all its transitions and changes, finding a balance between control and letting go is so much harder than I imagined. The moments I get to watch the minis make their own ways into the world. The moments I have to leave behind my own wants for what needs to happen. The moments when peacefulness comes from chaos and chaos brings with it peace. It is all moving in so many different directions. These moments in time are fleeting, being present is where I am supposed to be right now. There is no time to think about the yesterdays. There is no time to worry about the tomorrows. But there is plenty of time to stay up late for a good conversation. There is plenty of time to take a walk and enjoy the spring blooms. There seems to be plenty of time to make time for the right nows.

The transitions of life are constant. When we accomplish one task, there is another task waiting. We are constantly filling our days with responsibilities, some of which need to be attended to immediately and some that may not need to get done at all. At the end of the day, there is usually a replay of all that we did, all that we accomplished. And there is usually the dreaded reality that some things were forgotten or time seemed to disappeared and we go to bed feeling that tomorrow is going to be busy. We might do these run downs as a way to organize our tomorrow and we might do these to justify our day already ending. All in all, most of us put more pressure on ourselves to constantly do more and do better. When in reality, we spend very little time honoring the work we did and the person we are. Instead, we should all finish our day with a really big hug. We should give ourselves confirmation that we did great, not good…regardless of what was accomplished.

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.