Cashing My Reality Check

Whew. Here we are. January 4, 2010.
I’d given myself a good excuse not to write this morning: “I don’t feel like it”; but now I feel like I need to put some stuff down. Not for you, not because I said I’d try to write 10 pieces on Getting Shit Done in 2010, but because I just need to say a few things to myself, for myself. You’re just the fly on the wall.
I’m genuinely daunted by all I know stands before me this year. I’m scared as fuck about what it is I hope I will have accomplished when I’m standing on this date come next year.
Fact is, the first day back to work after Christmas is usually one of the most depressing days of the year for me. Mostly because the weather’s invariably shit, the workload is usually intimidating, and have the knowledge that I’m Canadian and yet somehow the fucking CHUMPS running this country think it makes sense that the next statutory holiday is in APRIL. (What part of big-cold-country-where-it’s-dark-a-lot-from-October-to-April says  “Go three months without a holiday”? Fuck!)
So, knowing that today presents pretty much the most intimidating longterm view of the year, well, I’m about to make a little extra coffee and enjoy the moody mindfuck that comes with the mix of GET’EM Optimism™ and We’re All Fucked Now® moodiness.
But I can be a fatalist. This I know. I’m used to it. I write amazing death scenes. Death by anchor? Wrote it. Death by bookshelf? Wrote that. Death by time management? Lived THAT.
There I was, being all fatalist but trying anyway to be “up” this morning. I started fucking around with my iPhone. No, I don’t have a lot to do in the next, oh, year of my life, so why not choose this morning to start deleting photos off it?
And then I hit some shots I took along Vancouver’s bike routes.
And then I remembered: Two years ago, I started cycling to work by February 10th. I lost 50 pounds that year. I changed everything about myself — or at least started the ball rolling. Sure, I blew out my back and had one of the toughest years ever from October on, but I lost 50 pounds!
And then I realized: Everything I did wrong two years ago, I won’t do now. I take my vitamins now. I know more about eating for athleticism. I’ve learned how to stretch properly. I own better furniture. I have more exercise options open to me. I’m less scared to ask for help. I’m more willing to try new things than ever.
It’s a completely different year.
Of course, it’d be easier to be stoked this morning if I wasn’t still sick. But I am. That, too, is a good thing. I was sick right before my year of crazy advances began in 2008, too. Just added fuel to my fire.
Having been there before, knowing what it took to have the success I had — and knowing what caused the injury I suffered — makes something about the daunting view a little more… accessible. I know I can do this. I know I can.
But it’s not just that I KNOW I can do it.
It’s that I realize today I have another chance to prove not only to myself that I can lose 50 pounds in a year, but that I can do it without driving myself into the ground with injuries and not-good-enough nutrition.
I like proving things.
It’s fun.
But this is gonna be real damn hard, too.
And then I see the iPhone photos again and I realize, it ain’t all hard.
A lot of it is rewarding. All of it is empowering. And, often, it’s fun, too.
Mostly, though, it’s just gold when you get to the other side and you did exactly what you hoped you could do. And, me, I’ve done some shit most people don’t think they could ever do — like lost 70 pounds.
Once, I didn’t think I could do it, either. I think that was somewhere around January 4th, 2008.
Well, then. It’s time to take a deep breath and realize it might be a whole new year but I got the same big damn heart.
Let’s do this.

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