March 3, 2014

2014 Resolutions – Time to Restart?

Taking a break from snow shoveling to admire the sunset tonight. Gorgeous!

We are now starting our third month of 2014! I don’t know about you but so far 2014 has been wild and a bit rocky! January was particularly odd for some reason and it seemed like it wasn’t just us.

Here in the Virginia/DC area, there were a lot of sad and shocking events in January, like our local newspaper filing for bankruptcy the indictment of the former Governor of Virginia and his wife, and a horrible mall shooting.

Personally, we had a string of bizarre, minor accidents with our children in January, including stitches and emergency visits to the dentist for cracked teeth. Fortunately, none of these were serious but they certainly raised our blood pressure. Our dentist joked that we need to bubblewrap the entire family as a precaution.

Part of January's battle wounds. — Part of January’s battle wounds.

February brought snowstorm after snowstorm disrupting family and school schedules and draining local budgets for snow removal. Even though we aren’t part of the school system, all of the canceled and rescheduled extracurricular activities and the general sense of chaos was a bit much to deal with.

Shoveling snow became a new part of my exercise routine in February. Almost no one in Virginia owns a snowblower.

We have had crazy weather here of late, changing from snow one moment to sunny and 60 degrees the next. One day it snowed this beautiful, lacy snow and it all melted away 2 hours later.

Sadly, March is off to an odd start with 5 inches of snow falling today and more closures and reschedulings. March also means working on projects like filing taxes and spring cleaning, an overwhelming combination. And if that’s not quite enough for you, daylight savings time (losing one hour) starts this weekend as well!

If you are in the same boat and all your best intentions for the new year seem to have fallen apart perhaps due to forces beyond your control, I would ask you to take a moment to set a restart date for your goals. Forget what has happened in the past and try again. There is still plenty of time in 2014 to make a positive difference in your life.

For me, I am going to be using the Lenten period (March 5 – April 19) as my restarting period. I had great success last year working on diet and exercise and am going to do a variation of that again this year that I will write more about this month.

If Lent is not a good time for you, think about when might be a good time to try a few life experiments (end of the school year? summer vacation? next fall when school is back in session?). Usually, you don’t need a lot of time to make a big difference. Even if you can only set aside a 3-day weekend, or one week or one month, you will be amazed at what you can learn and accomplish.

Perhaps 2014 is going to be a chaotic year generally but I am hopeful that we might just be shaking out a few bumps early on.

How is your year going so far? Are you in need of a restart? Please share in the comments.

P.S. Lest you think I am a gloomy, glass half-empty type, here are two of the great things that happened between January and March for us.