On a Scale of One to Ten - I Didn't Get Much Done

My begging for donations is front row center this post as the actual “Dash for Nash” takes place this weekend.  For those who haven't been reading this blog, Nash was in a terrible car accident when he was hit by an uninsured drunk driver.  His road to recovery is a long one and anything you can do helps.  Give what you can, every dollar, prayer and share goes a long way!  To donate, click HERE, but if you can't do that, share this post, and if that's too much, say a little prayer for Mai and her family.  Thanks again!

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Earlier this year I made public my resolutions for the year and I must say…. I am quickly falling on my face.  I made bold proclamations and underlined them with hope and moxy.  I spoke of shaving time off of my marathon times, losing weight, getting the kids going in a variety of ways and even improving my golf game.  I have not succeeded in any of these endeavors.  Here they are in the most successful to least successful of said projects. 

GOLF – I set a goal of playing a sub 40 round of golf.  While I didn’t hit that so far, I have hit two 40s this year.  I don’t feel like I’ve played well and I also don’t feel like I’ve played enough to do so.  That probably has something to do with responsibilities.  Stupid responsibilities.

WEIGHT – It may not be obvious to the naked eye, but I’m not impossibly far behind in my weight loss goal.  In fact, I am halfway there.  On the surface, one might think “halfway there with almost half a year left, he may have this one”.  Those people clearly don’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas or know anything about my winter weight gain or know what happens to me after I run my last race of the year. Conservatively, I would need to be at 130% of my weight goal to have a chance of being at 100% come December 31. 

RUNNING – I wanted to shave some minutes off my marathon times.  Whelp, it seems you would have to run a marathon to shave minutes from it.  While I have run a bunch this year, time concerns made marathon training a difficult nut to crack.  My last race of the year will be a half marathon in September but will unfortunately fall 13.1 miles short of a full.  I guess you could say I shaved four plus hours off last year’s marathon time, but that might be slightly disingenuous. 

KIDS – I wanted this summer to be the one where we worked on things that were important to them…whether they realized it or not.  I had full intentions of accelerating their math program, their piano lessons, their soccer play and their running, some of which they are currently interested in.  We did some of the above, not all, perhaps not even a lot.  I have begun to realize that they have to want it for themselves as bad as I want it for them.  I had dreams of them being ahead in school this year, of being in the upper echelon of their respective soccer teams and of getting a foothold on the piano.  As a parent, you want the best for your little ones even if they don’t see the full benefit, but without seeing the full benefit they are less than apt to dedicate themselves. It’s a conundrum, a Catch-22 that less solvable than I have grey matter to combat it. 

The message here girls?  Its twofold.  The first is to be accountable.  I made a list of things that I wanted to accomplish.  I put them out to the world (or worse, on the internet which apparently is forever).   It would have been easy to ignore what I had resolved, and to most readers it may have been advised.  But the fact is that I resolved to get these things done and for the most part, I did not.  I have time, but unless Christmas is void of visitors and ham, I don’t like my odds.  The second lesson has more to do with you directly.  Some of the resolutions I made were to help you accomplish things that would benefit you down the road.  The problem with that road is that it is a two-way street.  I can want it for you until I’m blue in the face but you have to want it, too.  What I can do is facilitate things and show you why it’s important but it’s up to you to follow through.  That being said, time to clean your room, at home soccer practice starts in fifteen!