not-so-thirty-something

...and thus begins my last year as a “thirty-something”. Of course merely saying that kind of puts the whole use of the phrase “thirty-something” to waste and gives away my age. Oh well.

I let too many days slip by without notice. Holidays included. It’s not good. Time passes too quickly to not be mindful of it. I think that’s one of the points of having a holiday – if for no other reason to notice the passage of time. I’m not having any kind of party. We probably won’t even go out to dinner. There’ll be no cake or candles. We really don’t have any specific plans until next week. The actual day of my birthday will be pretty uneventful. So, I’ll need to try and do something – if for no other reason so it doesn’t slip by unnoticed by even myself.

It’s kind of ironic, when did birthdays become so un-fun? Zachary walks through a grocery store and can pick out a dozen things he wants for his “next birthday” (yes, he just had his birthday). These presents he wants can range from things as simple as a box of cereal to as complicated as a trampoline. But even though it’s just barely a week past his birthday, the excitement for the next one is already building. But for me? I feel like something is missing. It’s not that I dread birthdays because of age (although I do dread getting older in general), it’s like there’s still that anticipation but for something that never comes.

I don’t know. I do know that I can probably learn a lot from this guy. I hope if I lived to be 113 I could be so eloquent.

Letter to creator of Dora the Explorer

A friend of mine on Facebook linked to this very funny letter to the creator Dora the Explorer. I love it.

It’s not about failure, it’s how you recover from it

You can’t have success without failure. It’s not just that success wouldn’t taste so sweet – it’s that you wouldn’t know it when you landed on it if you didn’t know what it was like to be somewhere else. It’s good to fail once in a while. Just because you fail once in a while does not make you a failure. (Obama says so! And it’s so true! By the way, I love that speech he gave.) What defines a person is what comes after that failure. How do they recover? Do they shrink and hide away? Do they become the failure? Or do they rise above and conquer it? In conquering this “failure” – the failure ceases to be a “failure”, and instead merely a stepping point. A stone from which to rise above and become better.

So why all this talk of failure? Well… yeah. I was able to maintain my weight for a few weeks. I did a pretty good job at it too – but then work consumed my life and exercise drifted into an afterthought, and then I spent a week eating and eating and eating. While I didn’t really gain a significant amount of weight (maybe 2 lbs?), the “habits” and healthy lifestyle I worked hard to build into my life dropped into oblivion. I’m not ashamed. I saw it happen. I let it happen. I’m not even sure what I learned from the experience. At least at the moment, I’m not sure I see a lesson in all this.

The end result, is that I’m ready to get back on track. I need to get running again. It’s been weeks now. I need to get logging again. It’s been weeks on that too. That lion has his eyes on me… and he’s looking hungry.

Shana Tova

Stopping in quickly to wish those who celebrate a Happy New Year. 😀

Happy Birthday Little Boy

With my parents here, blogging takes a back seat. 🙂 Just the way it is. But I had to stop in and wish my littlest baby a Happy Birthday. Even though at 4 he’s not exactly reading blogs, especially mine. Though, he’d probably read Spiderman’s blog. Especially if Spiderman blogged about band-aids because those two things are what he’s most interested in these days. Well, Spiderman band-aids and Bakugans. Have you seen these things? (Bakugans) Actually they’re kind of cool. Weird dragon-like transformer things. Really meant for older kids, but he loves playing with them.

Anyway! Happy Birthday, my little man. I love you so very very much.