2021, eh?
I don’t have 2021 resolutions. When the pandemic struck, I had almost reached my 2020 resolutions. Grief struck me when I didn’t fulfill them. This year, three words empower me to change my year.
2020 Started Out Great
A resolution is a goal, something you want to do that has benchmarks and concrete outcomes, like starting a new writing project. In 2019, I chose to take control of my health and set a fitness and weight-loss goal of fitting into the roller coaster seats that my less-than-active lifestyle denied me access to. I have hips the size of Texas, and while a man with a body like a potato on chopsticks could fit in a Bolliger and Mabillard bucket seat (Mako at SeaWorld Orlando, among other styles), I could not.
My son was growing older and enjoying all the roller coasters (and all the therapeutic intervention we went through to work with his anticipatory anxiety about them). In the meantime, I was increasingly missing out on his joy and the family memories we worked hard to create.
I sat among the other non-riders ashamed of myself, angry at the misogyny inherent in the coaster design, and terrible disappointed. But I also had to be honest with myself. I wasn’t the healthiest version of me that I could be, curves or no curves.
No More
I set a goal, which was to fit onto the Mako roller coaster with my husband and son, and every other g-damn roller coaster on our trip to Orlando in Feb 2020. I threw in a resolution to run a half-marathon at the 2020 Star Wars runDisney event in April for good measure. Yes, I am a proud owner of a bedazzled over-achiever hat.
I hired a trainer. I lunged. I squatted. I lifted light. I lifted heavy. I lifted too heavy and had to scale back to avoid injury. I planked. I dead-bugged. I stretched. I walked. I woggled. I jogged. I ran-walked. I ran. I sprinted.
When the trip came around, I had dropped over 60lbs, developed stronger muscles than my husband, and squared off with my nemesis: the Mako tester seat.
Whomp! I flopped into the bucket seat chair like a teen in a bean bag chair. Honestly, if smiles carried mass, I’d have to have two chairs just to contain mine. We rode over and over again, all three of us in our little “dare-devil” family.
Onwards to Space!
By then I’d run a half marathon on a treadmill as part of the “Kessel Run” challenge to run 2 half-marathons associated with the Star Wars Rival Run event. We called ourselves a family of runners. I was all set to smoke my first in-person half marathon and running challenge.
Then the world’s favourite virus came to town and everything shut down. I shut down. The “big” goal I’d set for myself, to run a half marathon at Disney World, wasn’t going to happen. As the months went on, it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to do it in 2021 either.
I lost the spark that drove me to lose weight and become more fit by training for a half marathon, because the event I wanted to go to had been pushed farther out of my reach. My visualized goal had been stolen from me, and I had no control over that.
I grieved. Hard.
Now What?
I haven’t given up. My need to keep my health in check now has months of training underpinning it. But I definitely slowed down.
Now, at the top of 2021, everyone’s talking about resolutions. Resolutions are that much harder to keep without concrete goals. But it’s hard to find a goal that has the same pull as hanging out with fictional characters and a giant mouse in a place that doesn’t dump snow several feet high? And what happens if circumstances outside my control sweep that goal away?
Instead, I have chosen a motto to motivate me: Make 2021 Bearable.
If I intend to run a marathon in the not-too-distant future, then I better keep my ass training for it. Choosing to sit day after day and binge-watch all.the.things in order to keep the COVID-blues away isn’t going to get me closer to that half marathon, or that longer life span. Quite the opposite.
Making intentional choices doesn’t mean I won’t fail. It doesn’t mean I won’t battle brain weasels over and over again. It does mean that I have control over the choices I make. And I chose to make 2012 bearable.
By definition, the word “intention” also means a manner of healing incised wounds. Goodness knows I have a lot of wounds inside me, some of which have kept me from doing what I love the most.
I act with the intent to make the year bearable, 2021 and I are going to coast along just fine.