Got to be real

This morning I pulled up at the gym and the lot was full. "Already?", I thought. "It's New Year's Eve, not Day!" I wasn't expecting it to start until tomorrow. Year after year, beginning January 1, the gym gets absolutely mobbed. You can't find a parking spot, you can't find a locker, you can't get a cardio machine. The gym fills up with people who decide they have had enough and are making a resolution that starting with day one of this new year they are going to drop these bad habits once and for all. When I got to Spin class everyone was talking about it, that January 1 spurt. It lasts about 6 weeks, just into early February, then it drops right off and things are fairly back to normal.

It seems odd that I would know that. One would think that my gym experiences started just this year, but the reality is that I have been a member for 5 years and would go with sporadic resolute commitment. I always found it amazing what January 1 can do to people, including me.

I've been a bit pensive all day, and I just went back and read my application for the Resolution Solution, which I wrote last year around this time. I don't want to say I was a mess, but I have to acknowledge I have come a long way. I couldn't walk upstairs without stopping. I literally could not sit and bend over to put my socks on. Who would have believed that one year later I can get on a bike and spin for an hour of tough hills, let alone that that I actually look forward to it? Or, that I can walk an hour on the treadmill? It would be easy to just say that that proves resolutions really can work, but I know this one only worked because of the approach. It took someone standing beside me for months and months and months, encouraging me, and helping me understand that I had to take it in tiny steps. That first walk on the treadmill was 15 minutes, and for only 2 times that first week. Left to myself, I would have tried the hour 5 times a week starting January 1...I have to wonder how long I would have lasted. In reality, it took me until November to work up to an hour 3 times a week. As for biking, it was 3 months into the year before I tried my first Spin...that was the toughest 20 minutes ever. But I did an hour twice this week.

I am not sure what I am trying to say here...the point I am trying to make...why I felt the need to write. I think it has to do with the crowd that I know is coming that will only last the 6 weeks and give up. I feel bad and wish I could give back some of what I learned this year, so maybe that is what I am trying to do. I am not saying that I am an expert and hope I don't sound like I am trying to be one. I am not saying no one should ever make a resolution, I guess I just hope to say that it has got to be real. If I learned anything this year, it's that tiny steps add up to quite the distance in the long run. I wish I could scream to that crowd to make a resolution, but to take baby steps, with the goal a realistic distance ahead.

Having said that, I am now going to think further about my quick decision this morning, that tomorrow, on New Year's Day, I am going to set up the sewing machine, take out all those fabric pieces I have been saving for decades, set up the quilting frame, go buy some batting, and finally get going on that quilt...I was thinking I could get it done to give Tim for Valentine's Day..umm...maybe I'll hold off on the frame setup until the quilt top is nearing completion, and instead make it a Christmas present...

Happy New Year.