Hope you enjoyed your little respite from my daily musings. But I’m back and after a week of being a sloth, I hope to get back in the saddle pretty quickly. I’ve spent this sloth week sleeping or watching TV since the day after I got home I was struck with a bout of vertigo. That is never fun but I am grateful it waited until the race was over. Speaking of the race, I have included some photos from the race. You can barely recognize me but I included some other people I know or met with comments on the photos when appropriate. Thanks to Jeremiah Justis and Trail Racing Over Texas for freezing his fingers off trying to get shots of us all (most of us would have preferred he get shots FOR us I think even though I’m not a drinker).

Anyway, we had the state of the union address this week. It’s an annual tradition and if you take the politics out of it, it’s a good idea. Of course, if you take the politics of out these things, then there is nothing left. But you get the gist.

I, personally, am reminded to do my own state of the union review each year. So often, we simply think of the past in terms of regret and “missing outs” and “I shoulda done this’s” or even “what ifs”. When we’re not concentrating on that, then we move into the future wishes and hopes. We’re always on the move. Movement and action is necessary and useful but not all the time. We need to stop and regroup. In order to regroup, we have to be able to review what has happened. What went well AND WHY? What didn’t go as we’d like AND WHY? What can we do differently to help improve whatever situation we’d like? Ask these questions of yourself and your life. Take time to review what’s happened in the past year (or longer if you’ve never done this). You’ll see patterns I guarantee you. And you can change or improve or continue these patterns depending on the results you’ve achieved.

You don’t have to wait a year to do your own state of the union. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do it once a month even. What progress have you made, if any, on your New Year’s goals/resolutions? What do you need or want to do differently regarding them? What has worked well and you’d like to continue it? What new goals or ideas have you had?

Try to get yourself really psyched up about this process. You can even make it a family affair and give out awards. You can even come up with the name of the awards yourself. Get your kids and grandkids involved. Teach them to review what they’ve done and to learn from it. What good is working hard on something and then never applying what you learned again? This is one reason my book will be different than most because I hope I’ll be able to finish Vol State again but even if I don’t, I have taken the life lessons from that race and can incorporate them into my daily life and I hope to be able to provide that for the reader as well.

By the way, if you want to put your name on a mailing list to be notified about things related to my book, you can sign up at this page. This list will be used to request people to do advanced reviews with ideas and edits and will also update you periodically on my progress. That way I can reach people separate from Facebook. My site remains a work in progress as I am a work in progress so who knows what will show up next. LOL

Anyway, have a great week!