It’s a New Year chaps!

The gift of a clean slate and a New Year. While this might seem a tad trite, remember how many people haven’t made it to today.

I started this blog for a few reasons:

My friends kept ‘reminding’ me to do it.

I wanted a place to put all my incoherent ramblings into one neat package. #OCDproblems

To write my way through finding balance in my life.

I’m sure there are other reasons but my short-term memory is shot to hell. It’s an ongoing source of amusement for my family. I apparently picked out my Christmas gift from my brother and sister-in-law (also referred to as my sister) and I don’t remember ever doing that. I opened my gift and it was still a total surprise. I do appreciate my excellent taste though.

I can’t settle on a hard and fast definition of balance that suits me. In my head it looks a bit like life flowing smoothly while I serenely float through my days not letting the petty details sink my boat. I can hear my family laughing hysterically at this as I have the world’s shortest fuse and everything grinds my gears.

There was a period when I was still living in South Africa when my life was pretty serene. That’s not to say there weren’t things getting in the way and it was all honey and roses. The usual chaos was still there but I had a handle on living with it.

I took the dog for a walk along the coast every morning before work. I kept a diary of 5 things I was grateful for each day, however small and insignificant they were. I ate right. I got enough rest. I made time to read up on things that interested me.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why I let it all slide back into chaos. My OCD is legendary to anyone who knows me.

There’s no reason why I can’t go back to this way of living now. It would probably mean not reading the news for extended periods of time because let’s be real, it’s outright depressing. Mass shootings. Presidential candidates and their crazy mudslinging matches for heaven knows how many more months. War. Terrorism. Natural disasters and all the ways Mother Nature is losing her mind. Everything causes cancer until it turns out it’s good for you. Chemicals in everything. Blah blah and the rest of it.

Yeah, so that’s gotta go. (Let’s see how long that lasts…. I get bored and flip through all the online news sites a dozen times a day.)

Being a Gemini means each of my ‘personalities’ has their own hobbies and interests. This in turn means I’ve subscribed to piles of newsletters, blogs and the rest of it hoping that somewhere in among all of that is the meaning of life question that’s finally been answered. My inbox takes up a huge chunk of my day just deleting and filing piles of stuff I can’t find the time to read.

It’s time to click ‘unsubscribe’ me thinks. I follow a few blogs that consistently post meaningful articles; the rest need to go. Step 1 in restoring order and buying me some extra time in the day.

Step 2 is going to be restarting my daily gratitude journal. Even on the worst days possible, there’s something to be grateful for, even if it’s just that you didn’t fall under the train.

Step 3 is going to be sorting through the organized clutter in my apartment. I downsized my apartment about a year ago and got rid of a pile of stuff on Freecycle. It’s a free site where you load items that you no longer want/need and you gift them to people who can use it. Gifting is entirely discretional but no money ever changes hands. It’s a friendlier way of disposing of stuff that’s still useful, but no longer useful to you. Why send it to landfill when someone else can get some more use out of it? Consider it if it’s in your area.

I have a pile of recipe books. I love books in general. I will pay to ship my books each time I move, I don’t care. Somehow my recipe book collection has taken on a life of its own. It’s time to pick a book and find new favourite foods. Either that or find a new home for the books. Many years ago I read a quote: Do not keep anything in your home that you do not believe to be either beautiful or useful. (Or something to that effect.) Words to live by. Somewhere in those books are meals that might just be the trick to shifting some of the extra fluff around my middle section. There’s no reason I need to live on the same small selection of meals when there’s a world of yummy out there waiting to be tasted.

People tackle weight loss as a chore. While it’s certainly not the most fun you can have in a day, there’s no reason it needs to be the bane of your life. Nowhere is it written that ‘dieting’ has to taste like shit. If it is written down somewhere, I’ve probably clicked ‘unsubscribe’ on it. Life also doesn’t have to be a constant battle of trying to diet or dying to try it? I ate myself into this mess, I’m going to eat my way right back out of it.

In fact, I think I’ll put the concept of dieting on my list of things to forget. Diet spells deprivation in my head and in the words of Sweet Brown: “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

I’m fortunate that my daily commute involves 2 miles of walking 5 days a week. Actually, it’s only fortunate on days it’s not snowing. On snowy days it sucks! That reminds me, I should get a dog… Someone please remind me because I will forget. I want one of these:

Run along chaps. It’s time to start working on your 2016 vintage.