"You do you and I’ll do me.”  This phrase is my mantra these days.  I use it for parenting, I use it for friends and I’ve used it to get out of a few uncomfortable situations.  I may actually be over using the phrase at this point, but it actually makes a lot of sense.  Each and every one of us is unique.  My wants and needs, my goals and failures, they are going to be completely different from the people around me.  Each of us comes with a lifetime of differences.  We can compare our similarities, but why?  Our differences are what make us the individuals that we get to carry into life.  And honestly, there is no such thing as normal or the same.  We are barely even alike.  Differences are everywhere we look.  So lets be the person we are meant to be, not the person next to us. 

Failure is such a powerful word.  We say it when we fall down.  We say it when we make mistakes.  We say it when we lose.  It is a word that we are afraid of, a word that we shy away from.  The negative connotations surround each and every definition of the word.  And yet our greatest successes come from the lessons we learned when failure was the outcome.  In all honesty, it is the beginning of everything good, it is the foundation for creating progress and achievements in everything we do.  Failure is the starting point for what comes next, what lies ahead.  

I have had quite the story to tell, quite the experiences had.  The past few years have led me through uncomfortable spaces and amazing places.  I have jumped into life, saying yes to new things and new experiences.  I have also retreated far away from people who care about me and hid deep under the covers hoping to make time disappear.  The ups and downs, the highs and lows, they have all been lessons to teach and exercises to learn.  And for some of it, I felt like I was just allowing life to happen to me.  I was putting in the work without really knowing where I wanted to go.  But I think I figured it out.  I know where I want to go.  I want to be the bestest, badassest version of myself.  

Being an adult sucks.  Paying bills, grocery shopping, the never ending pile of laundry, it sucks.  And that doesn’t even include the responsibilities of raising kids, running a business and maintaining relationships.  Sometimes I look up to see my life filled with to-do lists and alarms.  And other times I just want to hide away and binge watch Game of Thrones.  Through these differences, I have been trying to balance my down time and my free time.  A balance that comes at cost, a price.  Time is limited and time alone is hard to come by.  Again, adulting sucks.  Some days I don’t want to do this whole adult thing.  Some days I want to return to a time when life seemed easier.  The times when I worried about getting good grades (ok, that was never me), making it home before curfew and hoping my parents didn’t find out that I skipped half my classes that day. 

Let’s start with the honest to goodness truth, I am a lier and a hypocrite.  And now that I said it, I can dive in.  I don’t mean to say that I lie about everything, just some things.   For example, I lie to my classes about the rounds expected of them.  I lie to my kids about the time it will take to do the simplest chores.  And I regularly say “I’ll be there in a minute,” when I know damn well its going to be at least five minutes.  My lies are fairly harmless but sometimes the lies are bigger and the hypocrisy is something I have to face straight on. 

Saturday I was in deadlifting at a gym in Seattle.  The weight was pretty easy and I was on my last set when half way through my back went out.  I went to the floor and laid there in complete pain and disappointment.  I wanted to look around and blame someone or something.  I wanted to yell at any and everyone because somehow I needed this to not be my fault, I needed someone else to take responsibility.  And I also really wanted a quick fix, a do over.  But there was no way I could l do it all over, and not just because I was already flat on my back in pain, but because it wasn’t a lift that caused this.  This was months of training harder and harder, months of taking on stress, some that I didn’t even need to carry, and months of taking my weekends for granted and not spending the time I needed to rest and recover.  

The bathroom scale, the little thing that sits on the floor staring at you every time you go to take a shower or brush your teeth.  The thing that invites you to stand on it, so innocently, only to pop up numbers that are almost never what you want to see.  The thing that tells you, all too honestly, if you are gaining weight or losing weight.  This stupid little thing can change the way we see ourselves.  One moment, that moment the numbers settle in, can change the confidence we have in ourselves, it can change the attitude we have towards ourselves and it can change the relationships around us.  And most of the time, these changes aren’t for the better.  That little thing is such a shitty judgement of who we really are.  

I am not a big believer in New Years Resolutions.  Actually I’m lying, I love setting resolutions.  I love looking ahead at a new year, new possibilities.  It’s like a clean slate where you can wipe away the destruction of the previous year and enter into this space that is filled with optimism and hope.  

I didn’t think it would be this hard to sit down and write my final blog post of the year, my first blog post in six months.  But as this year comes to an end, I don’t know where to start.  My mind is a little rusty and my sense of humor is a little raw.  At this point I am just dragging my feet trying to avoid the truths of my past so I can find the honesty of my future.  So here I go.

Summer is beginning.  The days are long, the sun is out and the structure of the school year is gone.  There is so much about summer that I love, mainly the warmth, the light and the abundance of watermelon.  But every year I have to remind myself to enjoy the moment, enjoy the chaos and let the summer move as slowly as possible.  I have to remind myself that it is not important to look ahead to next week or next month but to spend more time in the right now.  It is so easy to get overwhelmed with filling up the weeks.  I fill them with important things for me and the minis and I fill them with nothing, sometimes just to have something to cross off my to-do list at the end of the day.  This year I am going to enjoy the laid back empty moments of summer.  Summer brings in an abundance of spontaneous get togethers and time with friends and it is important to have the time and flexibility to say yes.