Um, Happy New Year?

What happened? I turn my back and it’s January 10. Where have the days gone? What happened to my New Year’s resolutions?

Well, I’ll tell you what happened to last year’s resolutions. I didn’t keep them. I didn’t even remember most of them after the end of the month. January 2021. I had all sorts of plans for 2021. Get a new job. Finish a novel. Grow up. The only one I managed to accomplish was finding a new place to live…at the end of November. With less than a week before my lease ended.

But did I write 100 posts last year, like I had planned? Did I lose “the weight” and keep it off? Did I? Well, no. And these were resolutions. So, I kind of don’t know what to do this year.

Making resolutions at the start of a new year is tradition, like (hopefully) hanging your Christmas tree before Christmas or taking it back down before the next Christmas. It helps you (me) start off the new year with hope, with plans, with goals – looking forward with a positive attitude. New Year, New Me, New Everything.

Nothing makes a new year feel like last year – and all the years before it – like realizing you aren’t going to keep your resolutions again, or that you have forgotten about them entirely.

So…this year I am going to look forward to where I hope to be next year, at this time. These are not resolutions. They are more like “goals hoped for” in the coming year. This is where I would like to see myself next year, at the beginning of 2023.

1. Alive.
2. In complete remission. Entyvio has shut down all my ulcerative colitis symptoms. All bloodwork indicates my intestinal inflammation is subsiding. I am going to stay on Entyvio this entire year, if I can, and get rid of the inflammation, gas, and cramping entirely, and hopefully go into 2023 with a healthy colon.
3. Working from home or with a new job. I’m tired of getting out of bed, getting dressed and going to work. I want to join the millions of Americans who never leave the house. Online shopping, food and grocery delivery – the only reason I would need to leave the house would be to move again.
4. Published or close to it. I am seriously considering self-publishing at this point, just to get the novel off my hands and out of my face. I feel trapped.
5. At least twenty pounds lighter. At the height of the Transform weight loss program I was on, I got my weight down to 205 lbs. I have gained over twenty pounds since that day. I am tired of walking, but I have to get myself back down – between 190 and 200 lbs. would be fine. The jeans are getting tight. The elevator is more inviting. It’s time.

Everything hinges on #1. If I am alive, I can achieve everything else. 3 and 4 will be the most difficult, I hope.

anyway…

Happy New Year! I hope 2022 is better than 2021 for you.