I meet the New Year with mixed feelings; something has got to give but, man, it has been so glorious eating and drinking the shit out of everything for weeks now. Now to deal with the fallout – it’s back to work tomorrow and I don’t seem to be sufficiently stocked in stretchy professional clothing. My current plan is to rotate the two outfits that do still fit until, incrementally, more of my wardrobe becomes accessible again. I’m hoping my colleagues won’t notice. Maybe I can change things up with earrings – my earrings all still fit.

Next problem is how to make it so I can get back into the rest of my clothes. I have had that conversation with myself about how weight is just a number, and I should focus on the positive aspects of myself – but my charming personality isn’t going to help me fit into my clothes, and I will not, WILL NOT, buy bigger pants! In my career as an educator I have always found that where I set the bar for my students, was exactly where they rose to. Sadly, the same can be said for the clothes in my closet – whatever the largest size is, I will expand to fill it.

In Ireland there’s a decent lag time between the last mince pie and the first beach day. Not so in Florida. We were at the beach on December 27th – horrifying! On top of my fear of bathing suits, clues that the time has come to apply the brakes include my total avoidance of being in photos and, when cornered, the way I terrify random children as I grab them to place in front of me before saying, “cheese” (chin tilted just so). Another big tip off was that when playing around with a photo editing app recently, I was seriously considering being okay with my Facebook friends thinking that my teenage daughter was pregnant – if I pulled her stomach out just so it made my waist look much smaller. Signs!

So here’s my plan for the New Year, and it encompasses more than just dealing with my current roundness: I am committing to thirty minutes of goodness each day. Ten minutes to each area I feel needs attention. I promise myself to exercise for ten minutes each day, to mediate for ten minutes each day, and to write for ten minutes each day. I feel I can force myself to squeeze thirty minutes out of the day for these things. And the hope is that once I have done ten minutes a day for a while, some synapses will have connected in my old brain so that it gets easier to expand the duration of each thing. In the interim I’ll also do that God awful thing of trying to expend more calories than I  consume (hate that).

In the hopes that my derriere soon stops progressing up my back, that is the plan. I have already removed the bad stuff from the house; not as noble as it sounds – I ate it all. Today I did more than my ten minutes of writing (voila!), I mediated for a whole 17 minutes, and shocked the hell out of my poor, neglected elliptical machine for a full 15 minutes. Now let’s see how fabulous I am with a ten hour work day in the mix. But I do feel that the two pairs of pants situation will be a motivator. Otherwise, I’ll be investing heavily in earrings.