Monday, April 1, 2013

BTWG 2013 a new start

Well, here goes. I've been telling Chris that I'd get a blog going for a few weeks now and I'm finally getting around to it.  Well, that's not quite true. I've actually put a lot of time and energy into thinking about getting a blog going.  But I've had the convenient excuse that my work issued laptop has some administrative control on it that won't allow me to update some software that currently won't allow me to log in and publish my blog directly from my laptop AND my home  computer is very inconvenient.  I've recently moved and I don't have a desk yet.  My PC is setting on a low coffee table which isn't deep enough for me to set my keyboard on it.  So, I have to set back away from the computer and hold the keyboard on my lap and then my old eyes can't read the print on the screen...... So it's very difficult to use.  Enough excuses?  No?  Well, OK.  Worst of all is that every time I set down to write this brilliant, insightful and inspiring blog all I can come up with is... well... pretty average........at best.

Well, it feels like some things came into focus for me this last week.  I was part of several unconnected conversations and I read a couple blogs that all dealt with expectations.  These are people (including myself) who were discussing how things weren't what we expected them to be.  The topics included the expectation to sit down to dinner with the family every night, expectations of being in better health, expectations of better physical conditioning, expectations of better finances, expectations of better relationships and expectations of being more focused on participating in the BTWG program.

I sat back and listened to myself and the others focusing on how we weren't living up to the expectations put on us by ourselves, by society, by our parents and our partners.  We were beating ourselves up for falling short of some vision we had of being the perfect parent or partner or even having that perfect Easter celebration.  We were apologizing and rationalizing for falling short.  As I listened to myself I wondered what I expected from the conversations.  Was I expecting forgiveness or validation or a plan for being better or....what?  I realized that we seem to discount so many things we do accomplish because it doesn't match our original vision or what we think someone expects of us.  We hold back on so many things we could accomplish because we might not meet somebody's expectation of how well we should do it.

Well, I give up.  I'm not going to be the brilliant and inspiring blogger that I had expected I be.  Instead of waiting for the perfect execution of the perfect blog idea I'm just going to toss my thoughts out there and maybe someone will find something useful in them.

I also know that I'm not going to be the perfect BTWG'er that I had expected I would be.  I haven't held to my nutritional goals throughout the last 5 weeks.  I've missed a couple workouts completely and I've slacked on a couple of the workouts that I have done..... But ya know, I can't change that now.  So I'm going to let those go and I'm going to quit worrying about whether I can find the time and energy for tomorrow's strength training.  Instead I'm going to do today's aero workout as close to the program as I can.  If I can't do 5 sets.... oh well.... if I only do 4 sets then those 4 sets will be the best 4 sets I can do and I'm not gonna give that 5th set another thought.

And when it comes to that 9PM peanut butter craving I'm going to skip it tonight... just tonight.  I can't be and don't need to be spending energy tonight worrying about being perfect tomorrow.  I'll work on tomorrow tomorrow. 

Who knows I might exceed my expectations.  OH WAIT!  I'm letting go of those.

For what it's worth......