Day 2

I have wanted to start a blog for a long time, and even did at one point, but something stops me every time. Self-doubt, it comes in the form of questions like, what if my grammar sucks? What if I spell simple words wrong? What if I appear shallow, narrow minded and just plain stupid? Seeing as one of my resolutions is to write more and another is to start a blog, I have to get over that. Needed to get that out as a justification for any mistakes I might make, now you know I just don’t care anymore.
On to what changes I want to make or add to my life. I will warn you the list is long and I am overwhelmed by it myself, but lucky for you, you don’t have to do them.

• Lose Weight – Always at the top of my list. Even when I was skinny I wanted to lose weight, because someone else was skinnier. I have lied to myself plenty about how I don’t want to do it to look good, but to be healthy. The truth is I just want to look cute in clothes (insert remark about how shallow I am).

• Meditate Daily – my goal is to eventually get up to 30 minutes a day, but I know I can’t start there. (There is irony in this goal and I am sure I will address it at some point.)

• Read a book a week – a friend of mine inspired me to do this. I have my doubts, but I am going to do my best here.

• No TV (movies are ok) – If I actually try to accomplish the goal above then this one should be easy, because I have a busy life and it doesn’t have time for lots of reading and lots of TV. Why are movies ok? Because this year I made my first film, a student short, and movies inspire me and entertain like nothing else. Movies don’t prevent me from being productive, TV does.

• Work outside everyday- for at least 20 minutes

• Exercise everyday – 30 minutes. I am going to let anything count as exercise in the beginning, because I haven’t done anything in so long it will all feel like exercise.

• Run a half marathon – I will work hard toward this one, but the last time I trained to run a long distant I injured myself and that was over 10 year ago. For now I am starting the couch to 5k and see what happens from there.

• Keep in touch with my siblings– I miss them all terribly and I think I can manage a once a week call or email to them. They are all so very wonderful, each in their special way, and I miss that in my life.

• Write daily

• Get on an elimination diet – a year or so ago, because of digestive reasons, I had to go on an elimination diet. I hated it. I was like an addict coming off my drug of choice. I was bitter, sad, angry, all of it. However, after a short time I started to feel amazing, still bitter, but my body felt great. On top of that about 4months in people started commenting on my skin. Telling me I had a glow about me. Well then I begin to introduce foods again and away went my feeling good and glowing skin. It is a harsh diet but I think it is the only thing that will make me feel better on so many counts.

• Blog

• Make another film

Well there you go. There are few more but those are the big ones. I woke up this morning saying to myself, “how bad would it be if I start tomorrow?” The problem with starting tomorrow is that tomorrow never comes.

Day 1

I have for most of my life, and by that I mean since late elementary school, relied on magazines like Vogue, Seventeen and others of the sort to tell me what to wear, how to take care of my skin and hair and how to eat. Now I haven't always followed this advice, but it is safe to say it has royally screwed me up. I have let pop culture, over the past 30 years define what I think of myself. I am certainly not alone in this but never the less it feels like shit. It makes me pity the young girls of today. How can a young woman today have a chance at loving herself with the constant voice in her ear telling her how she isn't what she "needs" to be.

In all the advice I have heard, one piece I have heard over and over again. In self help books, magazine articles and advice from your local expert, "take it slow". Apparently if you try to do too much too fast it will break you and you will fail miserably at it all. So year after year, I lay out a plan of what I want to accomplish in the upcoming year and I set out to make it nice and easy in little steps. Guess what. It didn't work. I know you weren't expecting that were you. This all brings me to the point of why I writing all of this. I am here to prove that while it may not be easy it is definitely possible for this moody, out of shape, mom, wife, sister, teacher, friend, performer and film maker to accomplish just what she sets out to all at one time.

I want to share my successes and failures so maybe they will help others. When I fail I will take a bow and with a loud and lovely voice and proclaim, "I failed" and when I am successful, well you will know that too.