As Promised, to whomever is taking the time to read these ( Thank you! ) and of course, to myself. I am checking in to show myself that the same things that I demand of everyone else in my life, I will demand of myself. For the sake of this piece, I am referring to honesty, accountability and commitment, not to mention the value of a promise, even if it is only to yourself.
For my children, my promises have always meant something; that is the ultimate. I never say that word unless I know I can follow through. My daughter learned early. “Sweetie, I will try to get it done”, wasn’t good enough. She would look at me with her deep as a pool, brown eyes, and say, “But Mommy, do you promise?” Somehow I managed to instill in her that what we say and do matters, and when you make a promise, you better keep it. Promises are special.
I remain accountable to my kids. I remain accountable to whomever I work for. I remain accountable to this blog; even if no one is reading, it matters to me. For those who do any kind of writing, or creative art, the need to create exists. Always a frustrated artist, at this point in my life, I have a need to put words on paper. I have no difficulty with keeping these promises.
My calendar is full of obligations and promised. It is hi lighted and color coded. It keeps me grounded, but fails to take into consideration that there is a very important person to whom I am responsible:me. My promise on Mother’s Day, to myself, was to add myself back into that mix. I am important too.
A whopping 3 days later ( Well, we need to start SOMEWHERE ), here is a sample of my progress.
My goal, or rather the suggested goal of my Fitbit, which is my new best friend ( Sorry BFF; I still love you) is to allow myself something measurable and to provide myself places where I can set goals and make improvements to my health. This is yesterday’s screen shot. I have added some arrows to point out my goals:
1. Sleep – It is simply not healthy for a person to live on 4 hrs of sleep per evening. I took this at 6:43 AM as you can see, and if you asked BFF, she would confirm that we were texting past 11PM last night. NOT GOOD.
2. Weight – although it is not really the priority, I would like to lose 15 pounds this summer. ( I blurred the details because you should never ask a lady her weight.)
3. I made over 7,000 steps yesterday. 10,000 is the goal. As the evening wore down, and I was cooking dinner, I ran around my house a few times, and up and down the steps to increase my productivity. I checked my App, and voila! Progress. Little pieces add up.
4. Colors- My goal is no yellow! Yellow makes me wonder how much further I would have needed to get to the next color.
5. Keep rowing. Somehow peaceful, in spite of the energy exerted. I love it. I used to do it in College. ( Just a caveat here. I am also using another app called My Fitness Pal. Fitbit does not monitor all kinds of activities, so I can link the apps, and when I enter the rowing on the My Fitness Pal app, it kindly enters it on my Fitbit, and not only provides me with the calories burned, it tells me how many more calories I am allowed to eat based on my profile and activity. Isn’t it lovely when we all work together??
So, there we are. I kept a very important promise to myself. I will continue to check in, and hopefully be able to share some progress, both emotional and physical.
Feel free to join me. You matter too.
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