A Year of Friends

2014, while disappointing in terms of fitness, has been the year of friends for me. This year has been filled with many happy memories, and while none can fall into the romance category, every single one is attached to a friend or two.

Running races, yoga in front of the Rock Hall, housewarming parties, birthday celebrations, trivia nights, dinners, and last minute drinks have helped me to realize how blessed my life is because of the friendships I have. While my friends list has gotten shorter as I entered my 30's, the people on the list and the friendships with them have gotten richer.

It is the ones who have stayed who matter. The ones, no matter how near or far, who are happy to call me a friend, even if it has been days or weeks since we have talked or seen each other. For a few of them, they are the reasons why I have found myself again after so long. The people who believed in me, when I had lost faith in myself. The ones who haven't given up hope that someone is out there for me, when I no longer have it for myself. 

I hope your year has also been equally blessed with cherished friendships. And while 2015, will hopefully be a year of transformation, I hope my friendships will continue to transform me into a better person each day. 

Getting Back in the Saddle

As the year draws to a close, I once again reflect on what I have accomplished and what I have yet to complete. I was excited for 2014, hoping that I could get back into triathlons and finally getting a handle on the weight struggles. However, after ACL surgery and a compression injury in my good leg, I am looking at December knowing that none of my fitness and health goals have been accomplished.

I am hoping that 2015 will be the year of getting back in the saddle..or more literally, the bike saddle. In about eight weeks, I should be healed enough from my compression injury to be able to focus on more intensive training. Which means the month of December and January will be about slowly easing back into a fitness routine.

After attending several Believe in Cleveland events, I am going to try and find a place that is affordable enough for me to devote more time to the practice. Not only is it a great form of exercise, but I am in desperate need of something that allows me to center, refocus, and most importantly, release some of the stress I have been holding.

When I dropped 60 pounds almost 8 years ago, I did it because I was not happy with the person in the mirror. I was embarrassed to be in photographs, and felt like a walrus in anything revealing. This time around, I need to lose approximately 80 pounds, and have a bigger challenge ahead. But as before, this journey is personal, and for myself. I am doing it for me, and that should be the biggest motivator as I move forward into 2015.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

“Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness” -Richard Wright, Black Boy

There is a lot of hate in this world. And given the recent happenings in our country, I can understand the anger, resentment, and frustrations that many Americans are feeling. I can also say that because I was born into the majority class, I have also felt a lot of "white guilt". For others, discussion of the racial divide that still separates ethnic groups by social-economic classes, is very volatile. The amount of mud slinging by people who are found among friends lists on Facebook, is saddening. We take everything too personally, without taking the time to generate a discussion about how we move forward.

We need to be more accepting of the fact that world is not the way we would like it. That many people for various reasons are too often denied rights that many of us, including myself take for granted. We are too willing to point fingers, instead of turning the finger around at ourselves, and asking, "What can I do to make it better?"

Gandhi, once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world", but how many of us are really doing enough in our own lives to be a change for the better? We make a lot of excuses about not having time, or we chose to look the other way. But perhaps a way to make a change for the better is to acknowledge the good, the bad, and the ugly in ourselves?