Tripping Over My Own Feet

I'm a bit of a klutz. I can't tell you how many times I've been walking along and out of the blue stumbled. Not even over a crack in the sidewalk, which would be pretty bad in and of itself. Nope, just my feet.

Not only do I trip over myself, any sport involving balls threatens to give me a coronary. A debilitating lack of eye-hand-coordination - plus the fact that I'm a klutz that trips over my feet - has cursed me since the time I was a girl. I still have nightmares of volleyball in 7th grade P.E. I eventually got over the fear of my feet and proudly call myself a runner. I can't say the same for balls. Overcoming my fear of them, that is.

It's kind of the same with yoga. When I started practicing yoga while in collage I fell over many, many times in the balance postures.  I hated them, yet I found an inner drive that pushed me through. Soon they became my favorite poses. In fact, (tooting my own horn here) I am often one of only a few people in a yoga class that go deep into those postures.

All this has given me inspiration for the new year. Those pesky resolutions and all. You see, there's been a bit of balance lacking in my life lately. The figurative kind. I think I've already established the physical kind has been lacking for years. Most of 2010 was out of whack. I was either in manic mode making sure my life was close to perfect, or a slug. Hence the reason The Blog was neglected for pretty much all of December. Maybe that was just the holidays that got to me. It's gotta be the holidays because I was definitely out of slug mode my then.

I know I'm certainly not the only person that struggles with the concept of a balanced, yet fulfilled life. After all, "Balance" seems to be the catch phrase of our generation. The ideal that pretty much no one can attain. It's kind of annoying. Yet as with all things cliché there is more than a grain of truth.

It seems that we are expected to be perfect in all we do. At least that's what we tell ourselves. Stop me if you've heard this. Yeah, thought so. I won't elaborate. I'll just say that as hard as I try to prevent external forces from derailing my personal progression and happiness it's pretty much impossible.

If running and yoga have taught me anything it's that it takes work to get better, and that you can only be as good as You can be. There will always be someone better and worse than you. So I've made resolutions. Most of which really aren't all that new. All of which will hopefully guide me to the happy equilibrium of self satisfaction with the desire to do and be more.

I have a sneaky suspicion that my list is a bit on the aggressive side which is what tends to get me in this situation anyway. At least it is being viewed with a fresh set of eyes. And that gives me hope.

So heres to a new year and new goals. And no. Overcoming my fear of a ball is not on that list.

Banishing the Slug

I've been a slug lately. Not last week, actually. Which is why the blog didn't get the blog updated until now. But for the past....hmmmm....I'm not sure how long (think many, many weeks) I've had a hard time getting motivated to do anything. The children were cared for. Kind-of. Nick Jr replaced mom. PJs were frequent all-day-attire. I cooked more often than not and the house was neglected until about 4pm. Both of which were part of the strategy. If you want to call it that.

I talked to Otterpop about it and this was a shocker to him. In other words, the strategy of hiding my sluggish behavior from him worked. Not that I was intentionally being duplicitous. It really was more like shame drove me to do it. That's fun to admit.

October was really hard. Which I expected and was prepared for. But November was too. So rather than working myself out of it, I embraced the life of a slug. The turning point for me was when I read CJane's blog post about her annual October depression. That kind of hit home.

It's not that anything was wrong. Or that I had a lot of pressure on me. It's kinda like "The Mean Reds" from the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. Only a little less bipolar. More than anything I think it was that I didn't have anything to do. Which made me miss working. Being forced out of the house early every morning with a purpose. It kind of made me want to put my resume out again. Which I know isn't the right answer right now. My babies need me.

Instead I made myself busy. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner will do that to you. And this week has been all sorts of busy. Sweet Cheeks had a birthday party for her friends Saturday and I've been assigned to help with our ward's Relief Society Christmas party. Then I'm working on a Christmas surprise for my family. I may have over done the busy thing, but it's what I needed.

And so things are better for now. Motivation is still work, but I have something to motivate me. Now if I could just get the motivation to train for the race. Lori - call me. I need your motivation.