I’m not one for setting personal New Year’s resolutions; I’ve found out years ago that they don’t really work for me, most of the time I couldn’t find anything to set a resolution for. Instead, I just live my life, taking it day by day. I’m not the ‘do things at the last minute’ kind of person; I actually have to plan things out and set a date and time. I arrive fifteen minutes early to appointments; if you arrive on time, you’re late…this I’ve learned from the Navy.

I do eat black eyed peas, though I wasn’t able to this year with the crazy power outages and the mess that comes along with it. Black eyed peas brought me luck all last year though; I did really well on my grades in both semesters in college, my children’s book got accepted for publication and will be out in March this year, I still have a roof over my head and am able to provide food for me and my child. I also got a majority of my novel written.

I always remain positive about things, you never know when things turn out for the best, and they usually do, especially when you’re thinking positive. Life’s too short to think negative all the time, it’s bad for your health and people don’t like being around that kind of energy.

A few summers ago I had to watch one of my nephews as his mom had to work odd hours. He always told me ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that’, I told him politely, “if you keep saying that, you’ll only believe yourself, but if you say you ‘can do it’ then you ‘will do it’.” Soon his way of thinking changed and he started saying ‘I can do it’ and he actually could. He had finally passed a level on a video game that he was having trouble on, normally he would ask me to do it, but this time I was really too busy to play video games with him.

I think the number one resolution every one sets for themselves is to lose weight. I’ve never had this problem until after I had my daughter. I was an avid runner, always in shape, then I got pregnant and the weight just piled on. I think I gained 75lbs with my daughter. She wasn’t a big baby either, both the doctor and I thought she was going to be, but she came out at 7lbs and 19ins long.

A few months after I had my daughter, I started taking Zumba classes. The weight started to come off and I was feeling great; I was at 140lbs. Then I slipped a disk here at home and the doctor said no more Zumba. I already had an upper back injury that I was being treated for, but the slipped disk caused more pain than anything I’ve ever experienced. The meds I was put on caused me to gain weight, so now I was back to where I was.

After several months of therapy and pills and nothing really working, I said enough! I stopped taking pills, but kept up with home therapy. Now my weight just yo-yo’s between 150-165. I still hold onto my size 7 jeans and silently tell them that I’ll see them again, just not soon enough.