Talk Is Cheap But Rum Costs Money

Today is the last day of my vacation. I am very fortunate to work for an organization that allows for a goodsome break. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to toiling in a turbulent tempest of tumultuous turmoil. Not really. I like my job and the people I work with. There are some large scopes of project work in the hopper to keep me busy. Busy is good, because the winter is long.

I packed on a few pounds in December, making this a pretty significant stumble in my journey to good health. I stared at the scale on Friday in frustration as it read 253. How does one gain 15 pounds in a month? There’s no big mystery, of course. About the only thing I didn’t cram in to my maw was bread and pasta. Everything else was fair game. My sloth-like behavior of the last two-weeks didn’t help. Forget about not being able to outrun my fork; I’d have to work to catch up.

Well, it’s a new month, a new year and a new start. My ‘Back to Balance’ plan is pretty familiar, because it works.

• I bite, I write. Journal everything in MyFitnessPal
• Start each morning with a quickie warm up: 10 burpees, 25 squats, 25 pushups and 25 inverted rows If I'm shoveling snow, it'll count instead. Jus' sayin'.
• Start the workday with walking 3-5km and track with Endomondo
• Monday, Wednesday and Friday are 30 minute cardio days, treadmill in the morning ideally, but lunchtime is okay. Once the weather gets good again, I'll hook up with Andre for going outside instead.
• Tuesday and Thursday are 30 minute free weight lifting days. I have a circuit that I like to do that keeps my heart rate up and makes everything burn. Sounds fun, right? I'll add Monday and Friday once I'm back in the groove. Wednesdays and weekends will be rest days from strength training.
• I have a script for updated blood chemistry. I'll go have it drawn in a week or too after I detox from the holidays a bit.
• Thinking about running the Bluenose 10k again this year. Am I crazy?

‘Doug Langille Writing: Year One’ was one of the things I’m most proud of this past year. I wrote more than forty pieces of fiction, 3 of which are published in ‘Midnight Abyss’. Another is online at Dark Futures and coming out in print as part of ‘Dark Futures Annual 1’.

I’ve been very active in Writer’s Carnival as an author and as part of the admin team. What’s really cool is that Anisa and I have partnered up on a new site called Reader’s Carnival as a way for Writer’s Carnival members to have the very best of their work published beyond the echo chamber of a writing community. In a nutshell, Writer’s Carnival is for writers and Reader’s Carnival is for readers. It launches tomorrow.

My ‘Year Two’ writing commitments are straightforward:

• Continue to write short fiction from writing prompts at Writer's Digest. I really like these and the community there is friendly.
• Continue to work with the Writer's Carnival community. If you're an aspiring writer, this is a great place to get support.
• Nurture and grow Reader's Carnival.
• Edit, polish and publish my own anthology this spring, tentatively titled, 'Tales from the Hanging Tree'. More on this soon.
• I've been asked to contribute to a possible humor anthology. This will be an interesting undertaking if it matures to something real.
• I might make my umpteenth stab at NaNoWriMo. November is a chaotic month, but I really want to give it a shot this year.