A New Energy.

I wrapped up my 2019 in the most beautiful of ways...coming home from traveling abroad. 

A trip five years in the making. 

It was wonderful and amazing and life changing and soon I will put an entire section of posts focusing on all my travel tips and memories. 

For now though, I wanna talk about that renewed sense of energy I felt after arriving home. Before getting married, I never really had an exercise regimen. I lived in a bike friendly city for 15 years and for about 10 years of it, I used a beach cruiser as my main mode of transportation. I rode it to work, to the grocery store, for a night out. It didn’t matter. That’s what we all did. We rode our bikes everywhere. 

With that said, I didn’t need a gym membership or to work out at home. I still did yoga here and there but mostly it was my bicycle and I. 

Enter me moving to a place where beach cruisers won’t work...enter a couple of years later and me reaching my heaviest weight ever. Now, here’s the thing. I’m not trying to look like a skinny woman nor was the weight gain this extreme amount but I’m 5’6 and unhealthy weight looks terrible on me. I end up looking like a round potato and I don’t want to look nor feel like a potato. 

I have great curves and fantastic tits! Yes, I said it! I said it! I shouted out something wonderful about my body. I am not ashamed! 

Y’all should try it too. 

Take a second. 

Now either say it to yourself or aloud...

“I have an amazing ➡️➡️➡️ (insert whatever it is that you love about your body here). ⬅️⬅️⬅️

Enter me debating getting a long sleeved wedding dress because I hated my arms! 

Ridiculous! Not to mention, I was getting married in late summer and planned on dancing as much as my playlist allowed me. Long sleeves just wouldn’t cut it. 

And then I put it on. My wedding dress: a halter, a line, with a slight flair at the bottom and longer train. It was the third dress I tried on and after about the 10th one, I went back to it. It was the only dress that made me get giddy bridal feeling brides before me spoke about on all those bridal blogs and shows. It fit my personality and our wedding theme. It also showed the parts of my body I was the least proud of. So was I really going to let weight gain get in the way of my perfect dress? 

Hell to the freakin’ no! Not on my IPhone! 

It was that moment where I searched blogs and fell into the Pinterest exercise hole. By the way, I love that hole. I had weights. I had a yoga mat. I had pinned exercise routines. I had sneakers and leggings and sports bras and the attitude that gyms weren’t my thing. I had everything except a legit excuse not to get my ass moving. 

Oh how it moved. 

I love my wedding photos! My arms and body though were on point. My arms and body were toned and my dress fit like a glove. Even those goofy, awkward posed photos still make me smile. 

2019 I kinda slacked with my exercise routine. I still exercised but I did it less frequently than the prior year. I still felt confident but I could tell that round potato was trying to creep back in. I knew I had a plethora of excuses that ranged from, ‘works been slammed’ to ‘I hurt my....’ 

And y’all...we all know our bodies and when something is a miss, it messes with our psyche. This just doesn’t apply to weight...it goes for everything. 

If any part of your life is off, you won’t shine the glorious way you should and we owe it to ourselves to shine fucking brightly! 

I’m still a beautiful being and weight will never change that but feeling good on the outside is just as important now. I had this personal conflict going on for a very long time where I truly believed that the word ‘deserve’ only belonged to a select few. It took me realizing that that’s my worst side teaming up with a jealous world. I deserve to feel and look good. I deserve to live a big, bountiful abundant life. I deserve to be able to take care of loved ones and myself and rise with the best of them. It was no longer an eye rolling word to me. It made sense. 

If you feel great, are enjoying life, and l-i-v-i-n’ than someone, somewhere is saying some gnarly shit about you behind your back. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t...so if they talk...and you know they will...then sprinkle it with a little of the ‘You’re hatin’ cuz I’m thriving’ blend. 

Give them something to be jealous about. 

I’m no perfect peach and I know I’ve got me some haters too but focusing on them just takes away focus from a cloud called Bliss. 

2019 led me to some great places and it was, overall, a magical year. There were a few sad chapters but that’s life and when I came home from this epic last adventure, a ‘new’ me kinda/sorta took off. 

My body clock was 7 hours ahead and I just went with it. I have continued to hit the hay early and get up when my body wants to wake up. Which happens to be earlier than before. I haven’t slacked from it and am now about 30 days in. I’m not saying I didn’t rise at a decent hour before but it wasn’t this early either. 

To be clear though, I work remotely and there is no official start time. As long as whatever task at hand gets done (in a responsible, timely manner)...I’m good to go. 

Now though, I’m not so opposed to the wee hours of daylight. It’s calm and quiet and a huge chunk of time where it’s just me doing me stuff! I put my headphones in, turn on the audiobook, roll my exercise mat out and get lost in the groove of it all. 

After that, I make coffee, do some household chores-whichever ones that need to be done. I then write my blog, creative business page or in my journal. 

It’s been about two hours now and finally I hit the social media outlets and catch up on app games. I’m still looking at an hour before I have to literally look over work projects and actually get work done. 

I’m now ready to tackle the rest of the day! Yet, I have tackled so much already. Laundry, floors, chapters in books, feeding the soul, feeding the cat, getting fit, so on and so forth. A routine I jive with. 

During childhood and much into adulthood, I always knew I wanted to be my own #bossbabe. Before that even was a hashtag. Going to school, I admired older women walking in groups getting their exercise in...with nothing but smiles on their faces. I imagined what each woman did when they got home? I imagined myself being them. “Oh the freedom,” I thought. Oh the choices to be had. 

Don’t get me wrong I’ve loved some of my jobs but they were just that...jobs. Places with bosses using me to make them a decent life. I still appreciate the opportunities and loved some of them to great lengths but my end game was and is working for myself. 

I’m almost there. 

I’m still tied to x amount of hours per x amount of days in a year and my paycheck is still meticulously accounted for but boss babe status is closer than I think and I don’t mind the money managing lesson. I’m not lacking in any wants or needs or desires. I’m living a damn good life and I’m grateful AF for it. 

The goals I’m reaching in the upcoming year are laying the foundation for new and exciting chapters. A future built on my terms. My husband’s terms. Our terms. 

After the year of wanderlust, I know that’s exactly what I want in life. I want things to be simplified so I can go and do as I please. In order to do that, focus is a must...downsizing another. Excess, say whaaat? I want my nest egg to explode with abundance. In order to do that, I need discipline and time. I want my mind, body, soul and wallet to mirror each other and in order to that, I need to keep an alliance between them all. Treat them like comrades rather than enemies. My future is a choice, just like a knee jerk reaction is.  I can make my life go any direction I choose. 

My husband and I made this plan to do all we could to get our life goal to start manifesting this year and our last trip was the reassurance we needed to solidify this plan into fruition. Push the wheel and watch it move. 

*real talk for a minute...the Law of Attraction doesn’t just mean wishing. it means showing up. 

So here we are, him and I back from our holiday...high on its energy. Its endless possibilities to keep doing this. It’s now possible to work towards the end goal. It’s now possible to build our dream life that includes a little piece of property along with a little piece of the world. It’s now possible to get that car I’ve always wanted, the career I’ve always aimed for, the relationship goals I’ve strived for. It’s possible to get the body to match the soul. It’s all possible. 

Focusing is more exciting than it has ever been...maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the beginning of it...and I’ve grown so much from figuring life all out in that few years. Ha! Maybe it even has to do with an upcoming monumental birthday or maybe just traveling here and there for a year rejuvenated my soul so hard that moving forward is the only other next logical step. 

I know this time next year...all my goals will be attained and I will be looking at a whole new level of directions and decisions to be had. 

My boss babe status will come with letters attached and a slay all day resume in which I’m hiring myself! 

My home will be more fortified. My relationship even stronger than it is right now. My income flowing. My humbleness radiating. 

I know some folks make new year resolutions but I don’t. I stopped years ago because I just didn’t get those limits like that. I thought if you wanted to lose weight, get a better job, find a healthy relationship, travel the world, become an artist, learn a new craft, etc...you get the idea...you don’t need a new year or an assigned day to start. You need commitment and motivation but this year that lame resolution thing hit me hard. In that weird sort of clean slate/fresh start essence that oozes out on New Year’s Day kind of way. 

“Out with the old, in with the new...no better time than now, 364 days to go, you’ve got this!” 

The thing is though, I didn’t plan this energetic shift. I just went with it. It was working and I didn’t change it. I’m not changing it and in fact, this shift has been here for quite some time. I’ve worked with it for a bit but New Year’s Day, it got  tweaked and recharged to better suit my own lifestyle choices. 

The visions are clear and I’m open to it all. I’m protected and loved and going after a different kind of me.