Happy New Year and I hope everyone out there works their arses off to achieve all those goals, intentions, and whatnot you all have laid out before you in 2023.

And yes, I have a few things that I want to accomplish this year as well.

We just need to remember it will take work and probably more than a little stubbornness to achieve what we are setting out to do. Nobody else can do the work for us, and unless you are paying someone to listen or care, most people outside of close family or friends really don’t give a shit about what you do as long as it doesn’t bother them.

I do believe that stubbornness is also called perseverance and it is a good word to keep in mind when you hit those tough spots in our attempts to be better or at least do things a bit different this year because they will come. So be prepared for the difficult moments that inevitably strike at the worst possible time.

Those times won’t be easy, but they can be overcome.

Remember this word when the tough times arrive. It is my focus word for 2023 along with it’s cousin “Persistance”.

My Intentions for 2023

Since it is the start of the New Year, when most of us attempt to do a bit of a reset in our lives, I guess I will add my two cents into the void. 

These are things that I think would be good for me to pursue during 2023:

• Focus on who I am now, not who I was, what I did or have done before — nobody beyond a small handful of people really cares and you can’t change a damn thing that happened in the past.
• Listen more, talk less — yeah, just shut up and pay attention to what is going on around me
• Make choices that take me in the direction I want to go — usually, it is the seemingly small daily ones that make the most significant differences in our lives over the course of the year (what we put down the pie-hole, who we associate with, what we chose to do with our time, etc.), so I need to choose wisely.
• Run more and enjoy the idea that I don’t have to run, but that I get to run. There is a vast difference between the two attitudes. One takes the joy out of running and the other adds joy to my life, but I seem to forget that at times. Although I plan on running at least 1,200 miles and entering more than 6 races this year. Who knows, maybe I might even surprise myself a couple of times.
• Enjoy the interests I have and do not get caught up in others’ expectations of what I “should” be doing (at my age — no less). I know that my interests don’t always align with mainstream “should’s”, so I will do the things that make me happiest.
• Stop living the invisible lifestyle and get back to being a part of the world again, though I will be conservative in my choices of the activities I engage in. Even so, I will relax a whole lot more when the VA at Togus does away with mandatory masking at their facility, which is what I use to gauge where we are in relation to things. Until then I will live and have fun, but make conscious choices that tend to minimize exposure overloads.

That’s it, those are the directions I want to go with my life in 2023. If I can do those things, I feel that 2023 will be just fine.

Any way you look at it, I have to move on from the years 2020 through 2022 — it’s time to live again.