• You think to your­self, “Wow.  I’m really happy. ”  Not just today.  Not just right now, but with my life.
• You find your­self diag­nosed with an auto-immune dis­ease (celiac dis­ease) and so many things begin to make sense.
• You think to your­self “I’m awe­some” after you walk/run a 5k.
• In the same day that you don’t get more than 5 min­utes in a row to work on any one thing, you also know that you can’t wait to go back to school to get another degree.
• You may have final­ized the design for your very first tattoo.
• You are read­ing an amaz­ing book and want to tell every­one you see about it.
• You have lost 20 pounds and feel bet­ter than you can remem­ber feel­ing in over a decade (see pre­vi­ous point about things mak­ing sense after a diagnosis).

I have real­ized that the empty box of the Add New Post page feels very over­whelm­ing to me.  It also feels like a long term com­mit­ment I may not be ready to make.  I used to blog reg­u­larly.  I also got into the Twitter/BlogHer/social net­work­ing world of blog­ging.  I felt more and more pres­sure to have page views and to blog reg­u­larly.  When I men­tioned to some “big” blog­gers that I didn’t feel like I had any­thing to say all that reg­u­larly, the advice I got was to write one or two posts a week and do memes two or three times a week.  That’s prob­a­bly great advice.  Unfor­tu­nately, for me, it didn’t res­onate, and instead of blog­ging less, I stopped altogether.

I’m not sure what hap­pened.  I don’t know if it was the celiac or if it was some­thing else.  What­ever it was, *some­thing* hap­pened this spring.  I feel like so many things in my life are com­ing together.  I finally have the moti­va­tion to go with my efforts to get back into shape.  I am eat­ing very well and feel­ing no depri­va­tion.  I feel more patient with my chil­dren.  I have a time­line for going back to school and work­ing toward a degree.  I have won­der­ful friends.  With three friends mov­ing away this sum­mer, I was feel­ing a bit melan­choly about hav­ing lived here for almost 15 years, but lately the awe­some­ness of my friends has over­whelmed me.  You know you have good friends when some­one can tell you that the new bra you bought makes “the girls” look really nice.  ;-)

The final straw that got me back to this empty box and helped me get words into it was real­iz­ing that two of my very favorite blogs are updated irreg­u­larly.  They aren’t every day blog­gers.  There might be three posts one week and then not another one for three weeks.  Regard­less, when the posts do come, I am really happy and excited to read them.

So, with that, I begin again to share my attempts to live a life of inten­tion while being con­tent with what I have right now.

P.S. Now I want to go back and link to ALL my favorite blogs.  Maybe I’ll do that down the line.

Actu­ally, if we’re being truly accu­rate, it’s been a year and eleven days since my last post.  I’m think­ing about get­ting this blog going again.  There have been a few things going on in our lives which have kept me from blog­ging (Baby #4).  There have also been a few things which have tempted me to start blog­ging again.  :)

My imme­di­ate plan for blog­ging is to log some recipes I have in web­page form to make it eas­ier for meal plan­ning.  I use a google spread­sheet for our meal plans.  I’d like to be able to have a link to the recipes in order to have it more eas­ily avail­able when we are cook­ing sup­per.  Hope­fully… (ha!) that will lead to more blog­ging beyond just keep­ing recipes in order.  We shall see.

One of my goals for this year was to read more.  I didn’t set a goal or a type of book that I wanted to read.  I just wanted to make it a pri­or­ity, and after the first month, I’m happy to say I have.  Since Jan­u­ary 1, I have fin­ished four books.  I am also halfway through a fifth and part­way through the sixth.

I just love read­ing, and I love how I feel after I’ve read.

Check out my read­ing lists and the books I’ve fin­ished in 2012!

I’m always happy to have more sug­ges­tions and reviews.  Feel free to share what you are read­ing or some­thing you’ve read lately that you want to pass on.

Right now, on many blogs, there is a lot of talk about New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions, goals, and some­thing I only heard about for the first time last year, choos­ing a word for the year.  The idea of choos­ing one word to frame my inten­tions for this year intrigues me.  I’ve been work­ing on writ­ing some goals for this year.  So far, they are more like non-goals or state­ments of inten­tion than actual goals. Right now, I think I’m okay with that.  This is my life.  These are my goals, and this is my jour­ney.  I can do it how I want.

So, yes­ter­day and today as I’ve been try­ing to decide how I feel about not hav­ing goals in the tra­di­tional way of defin­ing them, a word stuck in my head.  I hadn’t really planned to choose a word of the year.  I really intended to craft my state­ments of inten­tion and non-goals into goals.  Then, yes­ter­day, while I was clean­ing up in the kitchen, a word came to me and has been float­ing around my head since.

I think I am ready to step up and claim my word for 2012.  It is focus.  For so many rea­sons, this word res­onates with me and appeals to me.  I’m hope­ful that in another blog post I’ll be able to get all that out and explain why I am so excited about this word.