The End of December.

This year has been an awesome year. So many achievements. So many ups with so few downs. How many people actually get to say that?

I graduated from nursing school, my children are happy and healthy, I got married to a man who could not possibly be better for me and my family. I have a job (and so many people do not these days) and I continue my education by my own choice and with the support of my family, even though I don't really have to because I now have enough education to have a job for the rest of my life.

Yet, there is this little creature, this little monster stuck in my head that will not let me rest. This little monster feeds feelings of shame and embarrassment to an almost unbearable extent.

This monster isn't the bad guy in movies, the creature in the closet or under the bed, this monster is myself. It is the little piece of me that will continue to sabotage my best efforts at achieving a healthy mind set about food, about movement and exercising. I have not yet figured out the way to approach this creature, how to teach it a lesson, to make it run away screaming. Hell, I can't even find the damn thing. I keep searching for the causative factor that allows it to survive and thrive the way it has for years.

I keep wanting to be better, to achieve, to win, to prove myself and others wrong about first impressions. I am competitive in nature. But I become competitive about intellectual pursuits. How do I turn this drive into something more physical? How do I learn to compete against myself in a way that will benefit my body, my health, and my overall well being?

I haven't figured it out, but I will. That is what this year is about. To find the demon, the monster, and to teach it that I am the boss.

So I leave this blog post with a poem from William Ernest Henley. If you have seen the movie Invictus then it will be familiar to you.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.