Tuesday, January 04, 2011

No Resolutions in 2011

funny pictures of cats with captions
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I know exactly how this LOLcat feels. I remember when one of my then preschool aged kidlets told me I looked like Gus-Gus (the fat mouse from Disney's Cinderella.) I knew I had 20 pounds of baby weight from the youngest still to lose then, but I was so devastated.

I ended up losing the weight (nearly 30 pounds) due to a diet I had to go on to keep nursing Rose. She had food intolerences which meant I ate a very limited diet. The weight seemed to melt off. I dropped down to a size four. What I wore in college.

I need to lose weight again. I know that limited diet would do it again. But diets (of any kind) are so hard for me. Doing it for my daughter years ago was easy because she still needed to nurse. Doing it for myself, then or now, not so much.

Pathetic, huh?

Which is one of the reasons I didn't post New Year resolutions for 2011. After two difficult years, I want to focus on successes, not failures. 2011 is going to be the year I take care of me. I want to keep things as simple as possible. Not adding on worries or stresses over trying to stick to a resolution that's supposed to "help" me. I want to feel energized, not dragged down by "need tos" or "shoulds."

I could afford to lose some weight, but instead of focusing on dieting I'm going to concentrate on eating healthier. My good friend Alison Thrasher (Irish Dress designer) told me about this book Eat This, Not That! 2011: Thousands of easy food swaps that can save you 10, 20, 30 pounds--or more!. There are a few different versions, but it's to help you make smarter food choices. That's something I can do and not feel like a failure if I don't lose that magic number of pounds by a certain date.

I've been looking at writing goals in a similar vein. Selling a certain number of books, making a bestseller list, winning an award this year would be nice, but those things are out of my control. All I can do is write the best book I'm capable of writing at the time, which is what I've been doing since I joined RWA over twenty years ago. Well, I suppose if I won the MegaMillions lottery tonight I could buy enough of my own books to put it on a bestseller list. But then again, I'd rather spend the money on something else (a vacation!) than to see my name on a list for a couple of weeks. It's not that important to me or I'd have become a promotion machine over the years. Instead, I suck at promotion and avoid it like the plague. If not for my friends at LASR, I wouldn't be doing any!

This year, I want to focus on what is in my control...the writing. I simply want to write in 2011. I'll still need to shoot for a daily word count due to deadlines, but that's all I want to be aiming for.

How about you? Did you make goals and/or resolutions for 2011?