New Years Resolutions and the One Step Back

I love New Years Resolutions, I love lists and goals and brand new calendars. I love coaches and logs and measuring success. I love buddies and accountability and going hard core. I love teams and sweat and brand new strategies. I love seeing results, I love being ahead of the curve, I love taking on just a little more than expected. So I’m a real champ, real dedicated, I last for a good long while…until I slip up. Then, the purity of the pursuit is lost, I sniff failure, I kick myself in the head, I hate the goal for making me look like an ass, and I rebel like a big teenager for a long while. “Screw this, I’m gonna watch season 3 of Sammy and Dean…” Until I get back on that horse again. And I always do. But the rebelling tends to undo a lot of my work, the proverbial dance: one step forward and two steps back.

The only time I like that…is when Bruce is singing it.

But that song is more commiseration than comfort.

This year I’m not going easy on myself. I have career goals, fitness goals, inter-personal goals – up the wazoo. I am entirely PRIMED for slipping up on at least three major fronts! But this time I expect to have the two steps back, and because I expect it, I can gently work on it being two steps forward only one step back. I see it now as part of my process instead of part of my failure, part of my “self destruct gene” part of me that is “just like your Dad”. So, I hit the wall, I observe, “Oh, here comes the teenager”, okay, “watch some Sam and Dean today, enjoy your cute boys busting ghosts, then eat your Brussels sprouts and get back to the gym.” And HOLY MOLY, I’m now losing a day or two instead of a couple of weeks.

Crossfit Charlie and I have been going hard at this fitness thing and he originally thought I’d need close to twenty one on one sessions to get ready for group classes. I’m going to be ready in twelve. He’s impressed. I’m impressed. I’ve worked hard. I feel strong. I see muscles that haven’t been there for a while. But last week I hurt my knee and elbow. I don’t think it was from Crossfit – oh it kills me to tell you this – I think it was from tobogganing on the icy hill I was too “hot shot” to avoid. I couldn’t finish my work out. Charlie had to find something easier for me. I muttered, “I’m such an f’ing old lady.” And Charlie squinted at me and said, “If you say that, you will be. Now do three sets of lunges and bear crawls.” I chuckle and cross the floor, humbly, on all fours.

And that’s what I love about Crossfit Charlie. He doesn’t treat me like a middle aged Mom, he treats me like an athlete. He knows all about the one step back. He knows all about injury. And because we’re incorporating that into part of my process, I’ll be at it again next week. I might just be bikini ready in time for Italy. I don’t care how freaking cold it is in April, I am going into that Mediterranean with next to nothing on.