I am a hundred percent kind of girl. Give my hundred percent to a hundred percent to what I do and then find a way to exceed that hundred percent. Now, don’t get me wrong. That didn’t apply to my grades. Or to every little thing in my life. For example. My house is messy. Not a hundred percent (thank God). Because I don’t give a hundred percent, daily, to keeping my house clean. 

But when I decide to do something, I am going to Leslie Knope it. I am going to steamroll forward, head down, eyes focused on the path ahead of me. Friends, Romans, countrymen, beware. Because if you don’t get out of my way, I will squash you and apologize to your mangled, flattened corpse later. With one hundred percent sincere remorse and one hundred ten percent guilt and grief. 

I think of my emotions and my drive like one of those applause meters. A half-circle with lined measurements with an arrow that pendulums around, depending on the noise level. One second, I am flat on the left. Then, I get an idea. The arrow slips upward about to about 23 degrees. Then the excitement hits. Now I’m closing in on 45 degrees. The ideas start sparking. Oh…we’ve moved to 90. And then, action. Full steam ahead. And that arrow flatlines at the 180 degree mark and the corpses are falling behind me, looking like future Walking Dead characters.

My drive is dangerous. Because as I push ahead, not only do I create casualties around me, but I push myself into overdrive. As one person drops behind because of life, other commitments, the intelligence to escape from my murderous pace, I absorb those responsibilities. Or maybe I never surrendered them because, damn it, I can do it by myself just fine. Or I don’t trust other people with my vision (I’m not trying to be egotistical here but to admit to my absolute stupidity). Or maybe I think that I am asking too much of everyone so I should do the work myself. Or….

Full steam ahead!

The new year hit. I refuse to do “resolutions” because I will resolve to do…everything. And will achieve…nothing. 

But I decided to set my goals for myself. And, naturally, they were HUGE goals. That would require an overdrive at 185 degrees worth of effort. Because what else would I do?

It didn’t take me until the first day of school for me to realize how ridiculous my “goals” were. To write pages a day. To blog daily. To walk 10 miles daily. To read a chapter daily. To read a chapter in how to be a creative writer daily. To write cards and letters and postcards…daily. To cook homemade meals. Daily.

I’m not lying. These really were my goals. Get off the phone and its silly time consuming games and be more involved in life. Which is good. But my goals were just too much. 

I hit stop.

Reassessed.

What was I trying to achieve? And why?

And for whom really? Because I was sure as hell not doing it for me or I wouldn’t be exhausted and anxious immediately after I woke up. 

Enough. 

Stop the steamroller. Put that monster into park. And sit in the bucket seat and stare out the windshield at the world around me. Because I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of shoving myself forward to the detriment of myself and others because I need to prove something to someone (me). 

I still have my goals. Some of them. I still try to write a page a day on a project. And I try to blog five times a week. 

I walk miles a day. Not ten. Every day. Today, I hit about seven. But that’s more than I wasn’t walking before. 

And I haven’t read more than a few pages in my creative writing how to book. But I am in the second chapter. So there’s something.

I am 51. And I have recently become very aware of my own mortality. Not because of any health diagnosis or family health scare. It was a simple matter of math. That in about 4 years, I will be eligible for the senior citizen discount. Something about that kind of scared me. That I had so much more of my life to live and I had been kind of wasting time because “there’s always tomorrow.”

Maybe this is me having the mid-life crisis. But I’m not. Because I shotgunned the hell of my personal steam roller. Tossed the keys into the fire. 

For now. 

But, today, I wrote my pages. I wrote my blog. I walked my seven miles. I made a sort of home cooked meal. And now, I’m going to sit back and watch silly television with my husband. 

Timshel everyone. Choose to be good to yourself.