I’m hooked.

I was having a hard time getting into a new book. It is a best seller and I had waited for a long time. I was number 281 on the hold list at the library. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finally became available to check out. I was either falling asleep or just having a hard time processing what I was reading. Well that problem is over. I took the book to the gym and walked for 50 minutes on a steep incline. It seemed like 15 minutes max. I’m happy to say I’m hooked! I imagine that it won’t be hard to find time for cardio over the next week or so.

Good thing I already have the second book on hold. I'm currently at number 108. Who knows how long that will take. I better get back to the gym!

The mother of all procrastination.

My label maker is still in the box. I’ve had it for about 7 years. I think my problem is that I don’t want to “label” something until my system is perfect. Who wants to ruin a perfectly good label, right??? Also, I need to learn how to use it. So, to recap, I need to figure out the perfect organizing system, then I need a beautiful storage solution to label, then I need to learn how to use my label maker, then I need to make labels for all the solutions at once. I want to have everything ready and then go from unorganized to labeled in one afternoon. Oh yeah, I forgot, I need one afternoon uninterrupted.

I don’t think this is going to happen.

Enough is enough. This is my epiphany I had earlier this week. How can I be organized if I can’t remember what I store in which container? Once I put something away, I semi-forget about it. So logic would follow that is why I have things out, so I don’t “lose” them. I knew I had a reason for not picking up after myself....I like myself better already.

This week I have been looking around for smarter ways to store things that I have. I have thrown away a lot, donated some, and have gotten a lot smarter on what goes where. I had short things stored on high shelves, with tons of wasted space on top of that. My new best friend is an empty diaper box with a plain old hand-written label on it. There is nothing precious about this storage solution. I feel this sense of freedom knowing for sure what is in each box or tote. I’m hooked. Some people “love” their label makers (want mine?), I love an orange Sharpie and any old box.

The honeymoon is over.

So the newness of the working out has faded, shall we say. I’ve made it a whole month. I am still going, but each visit to the gym is a little harder to psyche myself up for. When I get caught up in something new, it takes priority over everything else. Then when the newness wears off, I look around and finally see all the things that I’ve been neglecting. Ooops! So then my new priority become fixing the symptoms that have cropped up during the latest period of neglect. It’s a cycle of endless catchup-itis. Such is my life. ;-)

The struggle is learning to achieve balance with all my jobs, hobbies, and projects. So my new goal for the gym is 3 times a week. That is close to what I was doing, however, I have to cut the workout to 1 hour maximum. Too many things suffer when I spend longer than that amount of time. This will free up more time to blog, declutter and organize. I will lose more inches in the long term if I stay on the plan, than if I give it my all for 6 weeks and then dropout completely.

So that is where I am. Working out is a lifestyle not a short-term obsession. It is just something that needs to be done, so that a long healthy life is ahead of me.