Installment One

A shout out to my sister for giving me inspiration. She is (as it appears) documenting her year upholding her resolution via the blogging world. I’ve decided to give it a try, how hard can it be?

Just about every year, the day after Christmas (or sometimes during the weeks before), I think about which resolution I’ll make, keep up for three weeks, and then eventually ditch for something more fun like drinking. This year was no different.

I decided it was high time I became more physically active. I hate people who sit around and bitch about not having the body they wish they had, as they turn on the John and Kate Plus 8 marathon on TLC and remain sedentary for the next eight hours, and sadly I had become one of them. And so it began – my new year’s resolution to be more active. I decided to stick with the vague concept at first, my way of cheating myself into thinking I’ve actually upheld my resolution throughout the year by not defining what “more active” means.

But what sort of physical activity would I introduce into my lifestyle? Walking? Too cold. Running? Too intense. Swimming? Haha, yeah right. So, what? I needed something indoors, at-home available, that would burn fat and tone muscle without me having to do too much. And then I thought about my sister. She’s done yoga off and on for a few years now, and loves it. Perfect! I was set. I recruited my BFF to become a yoga master with me – “Oh! I’ve always wanted to carry a yoga mat around and be like, Yeah, I totally do yoga.”

But, like all of my scathingly brilliant ideas, things evolved. Suddenly just adding physical activity wasn’t enough anymore (and of course by this time it had finalized itself to ‘doing yoga every morning’), I had to actually change something. While watching TLC’s documentary on super morbidly obese people – Half Ton Dad – two things dawned on me: A.) Tight yoga bodies don’t form overnight and B.) I eat WAY too much fast food. I quickly put my cognitive behavior counseling skills to work and assessed patterns in my fast food consumption – when I eat it, where I eat, how much – and discovered two things: 1.) I eat it when I’m suddenly hungry and can’t find a prepared snack within arms reach, or can’t be ‘hassled’ with preparing a lunch to take to work and 2.) The amount I consume per visit had increased. Yup, I was on my way to having my own TLC documentary – The Fatal Bite: The story of a young woman who ate herself to death. This of course did not stop me from finishing the bacon burrito I had just purchased.

So now I had resolved to add physical activity and cease fast food consumption. But still I needed more. Well, needed is a strong word. I felt diet and exercise are really the most cliché resolutions anyone could come up with, so I had to do something different. I added notions like ‘write more’, ‘keep my house clean’, ‘cook healthier food’, and ‘spend less time wasted on sites like Facebook and more time with the three dimensional people’. Basically, better my life.

And so my resolution entered its final stage of evolution: This year, will be my year of Zen. (Okay, really, it’s my year of trying to find Zen/maintaining Zen/figuring out what the hell Zen really is).

Thus, I have concocted this blog to aid in my maintenance of my resolution (which has a sub-resolution of: keeping a resolution for a whole year). I call it: The Road to Zen. I have some concerns with the title of course – feeling the word ‘Road’ suggests I believe this will be easy, or that I will find Zen like a hitchhiker on the side of the highway. But at the same time, ‘Path’ seems too short term, too impermanent. There is something about the concrete of a road that seems a fitting metaphor. Not to mention the appealing sleekness of freshly paved blacktop and the seductive suggestion of getting my kicks on route 66. Plus, think of the photograph for the book cover! (What? I dream big.)

So there you have it. This blog will be my documentation of my travels down The Road to Zen. What exactly that will encompass, I’m still not sure.