I dashed up to Velocity Sports today. Last week's migraine, coupled with Wednesday's flu, knocked me out sufficiently that my 12th new year's resolution of exercising 30 minutes six times weekly was in serious danger. I didn't want to go this morning and have my butt handed to me by Breanne, but I still wanted to go to something. Lunchtime seemed better than the evening, so, off I went.

I'd like to say I try to keep an open mind with instructors who aren't Breanne. I do try. But, darn it, the classes just aren't the same with the other instructors.

We started with an abbreviated, short distance warmup. Instead of lots of jumping jacks, followed by 40 yard sprints of various, increasing speeds, alternating with dynamic walking stretches, we did shorter distance (15 yard) skips and jumps. It didn't feel as thorough as our normal warmups, but we also didn't have any all-out sprints, so the warmup seemed okay.

The workout was 2 rounds of

• One legged squats with weighted ball toss, which the instructor called get-ups.
  With a partner, each of us would do one legged squats onto a jump box, alternating throwing and receiving a medicine ball at the top of the squat. So, holding a medicine ball, do a one-legged squat, stand up, throw the medicine ball sideways to your partner, do an unweighted one-legged squat, stand up, receive the medicine ball back from your partner. We did one leg for a minute, then the other leg for a minute.
• Farmer walks
  With weight plates, one in each hand, walk 30 yards, set the plates down and do 5 push ups. Pick up the weight plates again, walk back 30 yards, set the plates down and do 5 burpies (stand, squat, hands on floor, thrust legs out behind into a push up position, do a pushup, pull legs back up to a squating position, spring up into a jump, repeat). Pick up the weight plates again, walk back 30 yards and do 5 V situps.
• Squat throws to bear crawls
  For the length of time another group was doing the farmer walks, take a weighted, non-bouncy ball and, from a squat position, push up and throw the ball as far as you can. Then, squat down, putting your hands on the ground, crawl hands and feet to the ball. When you get to it, stand up, pick up the ball, and do it again.

After the two rounds, we also had bungee cord sprints, where we ran forward 10 yards with a bungee cord strapped to our back, touched a cone, and ran backward to the starting point. We sprinted forward and backward for a minute each.

Because we had an extra minute, we also did wall squats, while singing happy birthday to another person in the class. I tried to have everyone "sing" a shreekenade, but everyone sang in key.

Except me.

I should be embarrassed.

I wasn't.

I stopped by Kris' work on the way home and "convinced" him to head out for a coffee, while I had a hot chocolate. It was pretty wonderful, seeing him during the day.

Oh, day three is here, in my progress of getting organized, and all I can say is, "Whoops."

I can honestly say despite opening the site up to the world, I wasn't really expecting the world to show up at my doorstep. I'm both excited at this, and a bit, uh, nervous maybe? Should I start censoring now before the NSA/FBI/CIA/DHS shows up? (DHS always reminds me of Dobson High School when I see it, and not the retarded name for the newest government bureaucracy created by the worst president this country has ever known.)

But I digress. I'm getting organized today.

Wow. This could be one of the most brilliant organizational ideas ever.

If only I actually hung anything up in my closet.

I have about 1/5 of the master bedroom closet hanging space, which is about 3 feet of hanging space. I guess I could do this trick for Kris, and see what comes out of the closet for him. Or, I could take everything out of my dresser and pile it up into one big pile. Only the items I take out of the pile, wear, wash and fold could be put back into the dresser. After a month I'll know what I wear and what I don't.

Or, I could take today's 20 minutes and just clean out the closet, getting rid of mid-90's era dress slacks and business suits that just.don't.work with my current working style. No need to wear suits when jammies will do just fine.

Oh, and Kris made the bed this morning.

I have, at this moment, 26 resolutions for the new year. I should have put "don't get sick" down as one, but I would have failed at that today, making less than a week and a half, and what's the point of a short term resolution like that? I mean, I might as well resolve to be more efficient in sucking in air, for all the good a "don't get sick" resolution would help.

The first resolution I put down was, "Make only commitments I'm willing to keep," where "commitments" varies between commitments and promises. The two words are essentially equal, and reasonably equivalent that they're interchangeable, the only difference is in the emotion I feel.

These last few years, like, about the last, oh, 25 or so, my usual answer to a request was not only, "yes," but also, "yes, and how about this to go with that, too?" I'd go the extra mile, take that extra step, help out just a little bit more. Such behavior once prompted Kelly Johnson to comment I was one of the nicest people she knew (this, in my favorite conversation with her when she said about herself, "I'm a good person. I'm not a nice person, but I'm a good person." I miss Kelly.).

But, every time I gave that extra bit, I lost a little bit of myself. I overcommitted myself by offering more and more and more, to the point where I wasn't able to keep my word, and would often say yes to tasks, events, projects, dreams that I had no interest in, but my path had led to the point where I couldn't say no.

I've come to realize in the last few years (and tragically, it did take me these last few years to finally make this realization not only intellectually, but also emotionally), that by agreeing to do something, compensated monetarily or otherwise, I've committed a part of my life to completing that task. When you're young (younger?), what's a few hours, days, weeks, months? Doesn't matter, you have all the time in the world, you're invincible. When you're older, and holy crap, the lead foot on the accelerator of life isn't letting up any time soon, that commitment can't be made with the cavalier, carefree attitude - that commitment is going to take time, time the most precious of resources one can own.

When someone asks me what I want as a gift, my answer has been "time" for the last few years. Time to be with Kris, time to work on my house, time to work on my projects, time to be with friends, time to just be. I don't know when the transition happened fully, but the switch was flipped some time within the last six months. I'm no longer willing to commit to projects of someone else's passion, I'm no longer willing to offer before asked, I'm no longer willing to say yes if I don't mean yes.

I know where that last trait comes from, I know who introduced me to that thought. He used those words specifically to me recently, succinctly saying what I'd been heading toward when that switch flipped. I have no idea if he reads these posts. If he does, I hope he hears his words in mine, and knows how much I appreciate them.

Part of me still responds to the passion I hear in other people, the part that thinks, eh, that'll take me less than a day to do, here, let me just ... before I stop it and think about what I'm giving up by taking that less-than-a-day for that task. I'm giving up a chance to work on my projects, which I'm more passionate about. Another part can't stand that I've walled myself off from the helping of others, that I can't just clone ten of me to help all the people that ask for help, all projects that are someone else's dreams.

In the end, I'll be a better person for meaning "yes" when I say "yes," and being able to follow through on my commitments, exactly because I didn't overplan my life with someone else's dreams.

Resolution number one? So far, holding true.

Sweet! My laptop's battery lasts practically forever!

In my book, a battery that lasts 524 hours will last cross country for me!

The second day of my blindly following the suggestions of a magazine article, on my way to Destination Organized™ in 30 days. Second day, all of two days, dos dias, whoa, twice through the solar rotation.

Yeah. Two.

The second entry reads:

Okay...

Twenty minutes, eh? I decided to summit Mt. Laundry in my twenty minutes: sorting the clothes, starting a new load of laundry, shifting around the clothes from dryer to baskets, folding the newly cleaned clothes and finally (finally!) putting away the clothes that were folded last week and still sitting in the living room.

I took longer than twenty minutes. Why did I ever think laundry would take only twenty minutes?

Wait a second... am I supposed to make the bed again? Is this the same thing as the Twelve Days of Christmas where the recipient receives 12 partridges and 22 turtle doves?