(all photos taken with my Blackberry Curve this morning)

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed doing is confronting nature’s elements head-on. It’s one of the quickest ways to feel as alive as I possibly can.

Thoreau put it this way in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

This morning, life indeed proved mean, and I got the whole and genuine meanness of it.

Trina, my ever-adventurer friend, and I decided a few days ago it would be a good idea to go for an early-morning bike ride on the NCR Trail. For those of you who don’t know, this is one of those Rails to Trails projects, where old railroad tracks are pulled up and the existing path is converted to a walking/biking trail. The NCR Trail currently runs from Cockeysville, MD to the Pennsylvania line (about 20 miles), where it then turns into the York County Heritage Trail. It then continues north for another 21 miles to York, PA. The incline gradation ranges from 1% to 3%, so it’s a very easy ride. Easy, that is, in normal weather conditions.

Trina wanted to head out at 5:30, as she needed to be off-trail by 8 a.m. I did the math at what time I’d have to get up to meet her there at that time (we were starting at Monkton Station, nearly 25 minutes away), and I pleaded for a 6 a.m. start. We agreed that if we prepped well enough and got right on the trail when we arrived, we could bump it up to 6.

That still meant at least an hour of darkness before sunrise, and taping flashlights to our handlebars last time didn’t exactly work out like we had planned. So, we found some good bike headlights at REI for just $20. With a little bit of tweaking and $6 in bills to hold it securely in place around the bar, I found the light to be just exactly perfect for the ride.

The temperature was 17 degrees when we hit the trail a little after 6:15, and within the first mile, we hit serious patches of ice. We were not yet in any kind of groove, so it was tough navigating through this first icy stretch. By the time we hit the next patch, we were “warmed” up (there was no warming to speak of, but we had acclimated ourselves to the conditions), and we had better control of our bikes. It suddenly felt like we were in some kind of video game, where we needed to stay in the narrow paths of dry soil to stay on our bikes. One sudden move to the left or the right, and we’d lose control immediately.

This was especially hard to do in the dark. There were additional obstacles and challenges we faced, including fallen branches on the trail that our headlights couldn’t pick up until they were just a few feet away. To complicate matters even more, there were low-lying branches that were out of the headlight’s reach. A quick call to duck was all we were able to give each other. Some we missed, and some we didn’t.

When we reached the 4-mile point, we felt numb but pretty good. We decided to push on for another two miles, but almost immediately we hit a serious stretch of ice that was impassable. We figured we had reached our mid-way point and decided to turn around. I stopped to take a drink from my water bottle, which I had filled with tap water before we left.

No such luck. It was now a bottle of ice.

By this time, the sun had started to rise, and we were able to turn out our headlights and enjoy some of the sights along the trail (not to mention the low-lying branches!). The greatest surprise, by far, were the icicles on the rocks by the trail.

I wish we had had more time to really explore, but we still had miles to go, and by this time, we had lost all feeling in our toes and fingers. Besides, every time we stopped for pictures, it made it that much harder to get back into that cycling groove.

We made it back to Monkton with a few minutes to spare (and — no surprise — our SUVs were still the only vehicles in the lot), and we both felt euphoric that we had tackled the trail despite the bitter temperatures.

I haven’t lost that euphoria, even in the warmth of my home hours later. There’s just something about facing nature in her finest hour and taking in all she has to offer. It provides a good-natured, healthy perspective to the rest of your life, for living is so dear, and, as Thoreau suggests, there is much to learn when we live it fully.

I know that, for each of us, the title of this post means something a little different.

And I am sure, as well, that nearly immediately after reading the title, you thought a little to yourself what that means: Returning home.

For me, I did that yesterday morning, just a little after sunrise, on the NCR Trail (now dubbed the TCB Trail officially, but that’s probably the last time you’ll ever see or hear me refer to it that way), in northern Baltimore County.

I have always felt a great affinity for the woods, the shore line, the mountains. And it doesn’t take much immersion for me to feel like I have returned home to a place that is both as natural and comforting to me as any childhood dwelling might be for others.

I am at greatest peace, and feel my strongest, when surrounded by nature.

To those of you who know me, it is my Querencia.

First, the history, then yesterday’s ride.

I spent more than half of my childhood days in the outdoors. At just six months, I was tenting all over the region with my parents and older sister (I’m not sure if any of my brothers were still camping with us when I started; they were all in their teens when I was born). My parents had a few favorite spots they would go to when I was older, like Morris Meadows, Gettysburg, Harper’s Ferry, Cape Henelopen, and various places along the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. We also stayed close to parks along the Chesapeake as well as the Appalachian Trail.

Life didn’t change much when we got rid of the tent and started using a truck camper. These were the memories with my sister that I will treasure forever. It seemed like there was never enough to do once we arrived at the campground: fishing, swimming, community center, miniature golf, hiking, and meeting and reuniting with camping friends.

The pit fires in the evening were nearly spiritual, as we all stared into the flames, sharing stories and just absorbing the moments, both personally and together. There’s something about the campfire that transcends most other community experiences. The silence, broken at times by the crackle of the fire, is reverent. You just can’t get that in front of a television or computer, no matter what might be airing.

As I got older, I started camping on my own, taking hikes still along the Chesapeake and the Appalachian Trail, communing with nature with close friends as we day-tripped or sojourned for three days or more, immersed in all that was natural, peaceful.

Along the trail or on the shores, I always felt like I understood my place in this world, where I remembered that I was never greater than all that surrounded me. Having this respect, this reverence, was a wonderfully humbling experience that I was able to hold on to when I was back on concrete walks and in man-made buildings.

That’s how I knew–and still know–that my true home, my querencia, is in the woods, along the trail, and on the shores. For it is here that I am most spiritual and cognizant of my place in this world.

Yesterday morning, I went for a short, 8-mile ride, and I felt that spirituality again, that calling to return home. The call is so great in my heart today, and I am scrambling, looking for the time to get back there.

Immersing myself in nature is a constant for me. It’s something that is as natural as breathing, and when I make the effort to shift a few of my priorities and return to the woods, I find that the rest of my life falls into place simply and without effort.

I’ll do everything I can to keep centered in this, to thread the experiences close enough together so that my return home is not a a day-trip reunion but a longer walk, a thru-hike through life, that helps me handle the day-to-day stresses along those concrete walks and in man-made buildings. . . .

I welcome January with a busy pen, scribbling in various daybooks, laptops, napkins, notecards, and Moleskine notebooks. Whatever I can get my hands on, really. My writing has been furious, immediate, thoughtful, raw, superficial, deep. I’ve scribbled lousy lines of verse and brilliant slices of life without self-condemnation or overzealous praise. I am, in every sense of the profession, living as the writer I’ve always imagined possible.

I do this in tandem with a revitalized yogic practice that explores my own spirituality as much as I might practice pranayama (breathing) and asanas (postures). I am shedding this tired, old, obese body for a lighter, spirited, peaceful soul, one that emanates kindness and love more clearly, more effectively, to all whom I might meet. Friend, stranger, self.

For weeks, I’ve thought deeply about my goals for 2008. I toyed around with the notion of having no goals, no expectations; I’ve also contemplated rehashing the same goals I set every year (lose 75 pounds, publish whatever book I’m working on, etc.). But during these past few weeks, I have realized that such goals never really work for me because they are so impossibly unfulfilling. If I set a goal to lose 75 pounds, I cannot be successful until I reach that magical number. And for what reason? What do I gain by reaching Destination B? I succeeded once in playing this type of game, setting this kind of goal. And the moment that I reached it–the very moment I claimed victory–I celebrated by eating many foods I had managed to stay away from for many months. Before I knew it, all of the weight I had lost (plus 20 pounds) had returned.

The same is true for my writing. My goals are too lofty, too dreamy. They are too far in the distance and falling short of publication makes all of my efforts a dismal failure.

This game that I have been playing, whether I like it or not, has been nothing more than a pretty good defense mechanism for just putting my head down and getting some work done, day in and day out. All of those things that I have wanted so desperately will come to me anyway if I just do the things I want to do anyway. Why make the whole journey about some terminal destination? The only thing that matters about my journey is that, today, I put one foot in front of the other and live the life I know best. To live the life that defines who I am, genuinely and sincerely.

That’s all I have to do. And that’s all that I am doing.

So my goals this year are quite different than the ones I’ve chosen in the past. I am immersing myself into three projects that will help improve my health and my writing, all at the same time.

The first project is to interact with a book I picked up called Meditations from the Mat, which is all about the practice of yoga, meditation, and spiritual health. I didn’t wait for the new year to begin to start this project. I began the day after Christmas, and I haven’t missed a day since then. Committing myself to these readings and writings has helped establish a sacred practice in my life, a foundation that is being solidified by my discipline and commitment to living a more intentional life.

The second project is do a virtual thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. More on this soon, but in preparing for this hike, I am now walking daily and building up the number of steps I take (what a difference a pedometer is making in my life!). This hike will begin on my birthday, on March 3. I’ve section-hiked much of the AT, but I’ve always wanted to thru-hike it. When I decided to get married and have a family, though, I tabled my dreams of thru-hiking for at least 15 years. By then, I’ll be in my mid-to-late fifties, and I cannot wait that long to fulfill this goal (such a goal, anyway, is flawed like all of the other goals I have set in the past). However, I can do a virtual thru-hike by tracking my travels (governed by the number of miles i walk each day) on a separate blog. I will have all of the same intentions as a thru-hiker who is actually on the Appalachian Trail; the difference is that I will be transferring my miles walked daily to the hike I’ll be chronicling online. Not only will I be walking daily, I’ll be familiarizing myself with every step on the 2167-mile trail and losing weight in the process. Such a journey will work well with my Meditations project.

My third project is to develop and refine, through writing and workshops, a new approach to writing. This concept, which I am calling metalogical writing, focuses on the writer’s awareness and application of three things: who s/he is as a writer (awareness of voice) and how s/he thinks and learns, the form the piece needs to take to serve its ultimate purpose, and the needs and the attitude the audience brings to the piece. I launch my first workshop on this concept on January 26 at Towson University.

These three projects and active, dynamic, where success is not contingent upon a certain weight being achieved or a piece of writing being published. Every day I am immersed in the journey I am taking, and my success comes from the steps I take today and not the things that, for whatever reasons within and beyond my control, may never even have the chance to happen.

(The following is a mostly fictitious account of actual events that have occurred over a pretty lengthy time. However, in my mind, this is how I have restructured those events to convince me that I need to get real serious, right now, about my weight loss.)

I went to see my doctor, and the news he had to deliver wasn’t given to me like it is always done in the movies. Usually, there’s a little piano music in the background as the lights dim, and the camera zooms in on the doctor’s stiff upper lip, maybe a tear swelling in (but never falling from) his left eye. He says your name. Touches your shoulder with a gentle squeeze, and breaks the news.

Not my doc. There was no music, no close up, no welling of tears (he did sneeze twice, though).

He didn’t even say my name or stiffen his upper lip. He just smiled, shook his head, and blurted it out.

“If you don’t change your life right now, you’re going to be dead in five years.”

I trembled. “What is it? Heart disease? Diabetes? Cancer?”

He smiled again as he scribbled something on my file. When he answered, he never stopped writing, and his eyes never met mine.

“None of the above. At least not now. It’s like those hurricanes that haven’t happened yet but we know they’re coming. Some guy on CNN said they’re all lined up like batters before a baseball game. We know they’re coming at us. It’s just a matter of time.”

He looked up. “You don’t smoke. That’s good.”

“What do hurricanes have to do with me?” I asked.

He did that whole shake-the-head thing again and resumed his Last Supper masterpiece on my records. “You know how they name hurricanes? Bob? Dean? Flossie? Yours are called Heart Attack, Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Cancer. Conditions are perfect for any one of these–” he looks up. “–Or all of them–” he smiles and returns to the file. “to hit you like a category five in the next few years.”

“I’m doing everything you told me, though,” I argued. “I’ve cut back on my food intake, and I’ve worked out 20 of the last 25 days at the gym.”

“You should have worked out all 25.”

“But I’m a happy guy,” I retorted. “I like to have fun, and I have a great attitude.”

“That’s great,” he said. “I’ll be happy to tell everybody at your funeral, just in case they didn’t know that side of you.”

He scribbled more intently on his clipboard, and I looked around the room. Everything around me–the walls, the trays with shiny metal objects on them, even the counters lined with glass jars and various implements of destruction inside each–were just like the movies and the soaps and the sitcoms. Maybe that’s why I kept wanting to believe that none of this was real.

But it was.

I didn’t know whether to be depressed or angry, frustrated or inspired. I had really worked hard in the last month to make some changes and knock off a chunk of my weight with what I thought was a strategic mix of aerobic exercise and managed meals. But after 30 days, all I’ve noticed is that it takes less time to go 2 miles on the elliptical trainer.

“What else can I do?”

He looked up with a more serious expression, thought for a moment, then grabbed a stool and rolled over to me. He set the clipboard on the white counter and began.

“I see this all the time. So many of my patients walk out of my office thinking that they always have more time than they actually do, simply because they haven’t been given a documented condition that requires 12 prescriptions and lifelong instructions for “beating” death. Most of my cancer and heart patients have a better chance of living longer simply because they have something they can fight. They can battle. They can defeat–or at least they believe they can. But you? You don’t have any of those problems yet. You keep waiting for a do-or-die situation that is much more dramatic than making a lifestyle change with working out and eating better.”

“But I’m already doing those things. I told you I am.”

“That’s not enough anymore at your age. I wish you and so many others could understand that obesity is just as bad as cancer or diabetes. You need to shift your whole way of thinking. Just like chemotherapy or insulin shots are required for some patients who will most likely die without them, you need to see exercise as your chemo, your diet as your insulin shots. Every day. Every meal. Every workout. The time has run out for rationalizations and excuses. Cancer patients can’t say that they don’t feel like chemo this week, so they’re just going to skip it. And Diabetes patients who are insulin-dependent can’t turn off the pumps for the summer because they want a little more freedom.

“You can’t say that you deserve a Three Musketeers after a week of good eating. You can’t miss a workout or two because you walked through a park or rode your bike. You can’t do any of those things. Your body, your machine that keeps pumping life through you day after day, cannot stand another single drop of extra sugar or fat clogging it up. Because if you keep doing that, even in smaller doses, you’ll never see death’s train when it runs right over you.”

I sat there and thought about what he said. On paper, it seems so easy to say my prescription is exercise and healthy eating. And when my mind doesn’t play around with what I’m giving up, it seems even do-able.

But that’s not my reality. I’m a thinker, a ponderer who dips deeply into the past, and that’s my biggest downfall. I want it to be easy to lose weight like it was 20 years ago. I want to keep eating the things I’ve always enjoyed. Most of all, I want to feel the near-immediate success I had always felt when dieting and working out. Before I turned 35, it never seemed to take more than a week for me to see some results that would then encourage me to work even harder.

These days, I experience none of that. No success, no weight loss, no inspiration.

As if he were reading my mind, he smiled and patted my knee. “You have to stop thinking about this like you are still 20. Give yourself six months, with no expectations before then. But you need to be vigilant about eating and working out. No rationalizations. No excuses. No food rewards. Picture your system as the finest oiled machine ever built. Don’t clog it up with the things that put you in this position for so many years.”

He was right, of course. I stood up, shook his hand, and told him I’d see him in 6 months.

After all, I have everything to lose if I don’t go all out and do as he says. I didn’t walk out of there with any prescriptions or appointments to see other doctors or specialists. It is all on me to stick to my daily treatments, my daily regimen, religiously, for six months.

Like I said: What have I got to lose?

Everything.

Blueberries for Sal….Do you remember reading this book when you were younger?

I have wonderful memories of my mother reading this book to me before I had learned to read. I remember asking her to read it over and over again so I could memorize the text that went along with the pictures. I wish I still had my copy of this book. I am sure that it was nothing more than a book-of-the-month knock off (it was originally published in 1948), but that wouldn’t matter to me. Just having that copy that my mother and I shared every night would be one of those silly priceless things I’d keep on my bookshelf.

We decided to take a ride up to Shaw Orchard just over the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. It’s nearing the end of blueberry picking season, and we wanted to get in our annual harvest before it was too late.

The weather could not have been better. It had just rained, and the temperature was a cool 71 degrees. The wind waved across the endless fields of corn and soy beans as we picked nearly 9 pounds of blueberries.

As we were in the fields, though, there was plenty of time to reflect about the stories my mom used to read to me, the times we would spend picking all kinds of fruits and vegetables at similar farms throughout the state, and the quiet times we would share at our cabin in River Hills, PA.

Tonight, we ate fresh corn and string beans (marinated in olive oil, garlic, and a pinch of salt), jasmine rice with a fresh homemade roasted tomato spread, and of course, blueberries. We finished the meal with a homemade peach cobbler pie. Everything but the rice came from Shaw Orchard…we could not have had a better fresh meal on a cool summer’s night.

But still, the memories linger of time spent with Mom. I miss her greatly.

Greetings, all:

First, let me thank all of you for your kind words, your emails, your cards, your everything. I am honored to know all of you, whether it be in person or online. All of you have made this passing much easier to bear, and I am very grateful.

With each day that has passed since the funeral, I have felt the rush of emotions coming and going with no rhyme, no reason, no warning. But today, I immersed myself in myriad projects that made me feel good. I constructed the trampoline for my kids. We bought various yard ornaments and bird feeders to bring some new life to this once-tired yard.

In other words, I began my return to living fully with my family, to writing genuinely for me, to working on the final production needs for my book.

I’m emerging from the sorrow and am living my life a little more simply, a little more purposefully, a little more beautifully.

It’s a good feeling.

I’m taking a step back, though, and taking inventory of a few things. My health, my career in education, my general workload, what brings me energy and what takes it away….I’m taking a step back and thinking about how all of these things work together–or don’t.

I don’t know. It’s a good time to do this, though. It’s not like when I was 24 and my father died and I went charging through this life barbarically yawping Carpe Diem up and down the east coast. Times are different now. I’ve got a family, and I’m 42. When Dad died I could have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Today, I struggle to make it around the block without feeling some kind of pain in my back or my legs due to my excessive weight.

So, times have changed, and they continue to change. But, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late to make a shift in my thinking and in my actions to bring about a better life for me and for those around me. I’d like to think that I still have a lot of living left to do, and taking care of myself is the first step in making it easier for me to do everything else.

So, I’m back. Back to the blog, back to the daybook, back to the classroom. I’m back to living, and I’m back to loving. I’m resurfacing with a new look on life, and with a greater appreciation for this time we have here on earth.

Let’s all enjoy it together as peacefully and as fully as we may be able to do in the coming days, months, and years, God willing.

Love to all,

Rus

And so we enter week three of that lifestyle change: new diet, new exercise program, new way of thinking, new everything.

I’m less than a pound away from that first benchmark of losing 10 pounds. I’m confident I’ll reach it–perhaps even surpass it–when I weigh in on Friday.

I’m fortunate that Maryland offers so many opportunities to walk outdoors. Many of our railroad lines have been converted to paths in what’s known as the rails-to-trails program (do you have that in your state?) that run throughout central MD. It’s nice. We also have Loch Raven Reservoir about two miles from our house, and on Saturdays and Sundays, they shut down the portion that meanders closest along the shoreline. From gate to gate, it runs a mile and a half. There are a few hills along the way, especially the ascent to the gate that marks the halfway point. It’s really quite dramatic for us newbies walking the entire length; as you enter the final quarter mile and turn a bend in the road, you can see the gate at the top of the hill. We took great pride in reaching the gate together, touching it as some sort of inspiring moment before turning around to head back to where we began.

What made the moment even more dramatic and made-for-tv is that, at the very touch of our cold fingers on the even-colder gate, the very first flakes of snow began to fall. On the mile and a half back to the car, the snow intensified just enough to change the entire landscape. It was like walking in a loop, unchartered territory, virgin land covered with silk-white innocence.

A new beginning indeed.

Maybe that new beginning was marked by what happened in the first quarter-mile.

Before we began our walk, I made a conscientious effort to set my stopwatch so that I could record just how long it takes me to walk three miles along the shores of Loch Raven. When I’ve done this exercise regimen in the past, I’ve been really ridiculous about recording every workout, every walk, every moment and how it was spent before, during, and after the workout.

Why would this be any different?

I looked down at the ground and synchronized my first step across the gate with pushing the top right button on my watch.

Step One, Second One. Step Two, Second Two. . .And so on.

Until that watch began to itch around my wrist at less than an eighth of a mile into the walk. I made sure I kept my stride while being momentarily diverted by this “equipment malfunction.” I took the watch off, double-checked the time to make sure I had not reset it, and tucked it gently in my jacket pocket.

Ever-nervous that I would reset it by putting my hands in my pockets, I kept my hands out in the bitter cold as we walked.

About fifty strides later, I heard a beep from that pocket, a solitary, somewhat sad note that I had never heard before (at least from my watch). I broke stride. I couldn’t help it as I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lifeless, stiff watch.

The screen was a pale olive green. Dark, blank. Within a quarter-mile of my walk, the only means of measuring my success had passed on.

At first I panicked. After all, what was this walk for if I couldn’t measure it? Analyze it? Put it on paper and compare it with the previous three walks already archived in ink? Where would this walk now fall among subsequent walks?

But then I did something I’ve been doing a lot lately. I let this panic consume me fully for five seconds. I let it run through me so I could feel fear in every extremity, feel it as if it were all there was left to feel.

And then I let it go. I picked up my stride, threw the watch in the big blue trash can on my right, and carried on, no longer worried about time, statistics, spreadsheets, or post-exercise analyses.

This workout thing, this change in lifestyle is not about the individual workouts and pushing myself to extremes. It’s about all of the things that genuinely matter in life and making these changes to enjoy those meaningful things. It makes no difference if, when I walk later in the week, I shaved off 13 seconds off my mile. To me, it makes a difference that I walked; I looked up at the sky instead of down at my watch; I heard the beat of the ruffed grouse’s wings as it moved across my path; I lived fully in the walk, and not back at my desk in front of a spreadsheet charting the latest trends of my exercise program.

Slowly, but certainly, I’m remembering what all of this is about. One fully-lived moment at a time.

I’m a sucker for resolutions. It’s just who I am, and I find new starts to be a very good thing for people. It’s one of the few times in the calendar year when we can all slow down just a bit and recognize what we can do to make our lives, and the lives of those around us, a little better.

My resolutions this year are a little different than in previous years. My children are at an age now where my successes and failures are very apparent to them (especially H, who’s now 10). Therefore, my resolutions focus more on outcomes for the greater family rather than for me.

That’s not to say that I will not be achieving the personal goals I set for myself; on the contrary, if I meet my greater outcomes, it almost certainly means that I’ve met my personal goals as well. Logically, it would seem that, to succeed for my family, I will need to succeed myself.

So…here they are, in no particular order.

1. I don’t need to write more; I need to publish more of what I write. With the exception of a few weeks where I didn’t do much writing at all at the end of 2006, I am fairly happy with the quantity and the quality of my writing. Now I need to get my work out there. I need to find an agent who can represent both my fiction and my nonfiction writing. I need to get my work out there, circulating, and I need to get paid for it.

2. I need to be home more with my family. I love teaching, and I love where I am teaching, but writing allows me to be home with them much more, and the amount of travel I do when I teach is just too much on me. There are times when I feel as if I am separated from my family, and I get a week with them at Christmas and two months during summer, and that’s it. People keep telling me, That’s Life…get over it. But I can’t get over the fact that I rarely see my family. It’s time for writing to be my primary and teaching my secondary. This puts me home more in 2007, especially later in the year, where I need to be.
3. We need to move. We’ve outgrown our townhouse, and our children need a yard. They need space to play freely and safely in a world they can call their own.

4. I need to continue on my spiritual path toward health and healing. I cannot allow the rush of the busy academic semester coming up to derail me, as it always seems to do. I need to hold on to this discipline, this ritual, this structure, and heal myself so that I may better serve others.

5. All this, I need to do with patience and with understanding. With love and with care, with hope and with belief that all things are possible…

The upcoming new year will undoubtedly bring many highs and lows for us; it’s what we do with them that matters. The Tao says let it flow. Let it all flow, the good, the bad, the mediocre. Let it come, let it go. Offer no resistance to it, and it will do no harm. I’d like to think that, with this short list of resolutions for 2007, this way of thinking, of living, will be possible.

May we all find the strength and the love to make this year all that we know it can be!

Michelle, over at Smoochdog, unknowingly sent me some serendipitous karma over the weekend, and it’s been swirling in me ever since. She posted some resolutions that she’s planning on tackling before the end of the year, and they are all good goals she’s set for herself.

It got me thinking about just how bad and dangerous my health situation has become.

I really don’t need much more evidence than I’ve received this summer. I tried a full-blown diet plan with an exercise regimen that, even 10 years ago, would have dropped 25 pounds off of me without a problem. Now, on the eve of returning to school officially for meetings and planning sessions before the students return to the classroom, I find myself no thinner than I was the last day of school. In fact, I feel less healthy now than I did in June.

I’ve emailed a nutritionist at my university where I’m an alum and where I teach as an adjunct. I believe they may offer me free or reduced-fee services to help me overcome this weight problem. It’s no longer an issue of wanting to make the change; it’s an issue of having to make the change. Clearly, I cannot do it on my own. If I could, I would have done it this summer.

I’m 41 and 100 pounds overweight. I love life, I love my job as a teacher, I love my family and my dear, dear friends, and I love all that surrounds me. I am too young to lose any aspect of my life, and I am so desperate to do whatever it takes to save my life and bring me back to a more healthy place.

The Seagull Century that I wanted to ride in is now a bust, but there’s a walk-marathon in Orlando in January, and Team-In-Training for that event begins in September. I plan on joining that program to walk for my sister and for my mother, as well as for myself. It’s one part of the puzzle that may help the other parts fall more easily into place.

I don’t know. All I do know is that being this way, feeling this way, is a killer on my self-esteem, and I am so distressed to be returning to the classroom in worse health than when I left it two months ago.

I’ll let y’all know how the meetings go with the nutritionist, if they work out. I’m planning on taking Michelle’s lead and keeping all of this out in the open. It may help me, and it may help others out there who are facing a similar situation.

So…Thanks, Michelle. Here’s to everyone finding their path tomorrow with fewer pebbles and a few more rose petals…

as always……………….rvw :)

I’ll tell you what makes me happy (Lush lovers, please pardon the steal of this happy, happy phrase):

Finding another small, small, nature-lovin’, happy hippy kind of home business that compliments Lush products, which i have fallen madly in love with over the past month or so.

Enter Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Never before have I found such a magic(k)al one-two punch in the world of feeling and smelling so, so good…. :) BPAL uses essential oils to create the most exotic and often sensual blends, and they are completely vegan.
Let me back up here just a bit… Lately I’ve been realizing the powerful calming effect that certain scents can have on you, and I’ve added it to my growing list of helpful items that help me hold on to my center a little longer each day. It’s not an easy thing to do these days, and I’m finding greater peace in refining my selections of scents to work with my other practices of meditation and musical therapy.

Eventually, in perhaps the next 2-3 years, I will attend the Baltimore School of Massage and earn a degree as a therapist in deep tissue, myofascial, and Swedish massage. I am fascinated with the various ways in which the body responds favorably to the senses, and I am eager to learn how music, scents, and massage can be woven together for a transcending experience toward balance and inner peace.

So…what makes me happy? Lush, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the right blend of music, and the transcending experience of total relaxation and peaceful meditation….