Authentically Flawed

Ahem. Is this thing on? If neglect were a person, my poor blog would be justified in contacting the authorities to report me. As we kick off the 23rd episode of this century, I have done a lot of reflection. 2022 was not what I’d call a banner year in the life of Lex. Without rehashing all the unimportant details, I’ll say I realized this past week that a lot of why the year was lackluster was because I dragged too much from 2021 into 2022 and I didn’t ground myself properly heading into the year. As I re-read journal entries I recognized that I had stopped practicing gratitude and for the most part was only grabbing my pen when I was frustrated about something and needed to release it. While writing is and should be a cathartic experience, I was just feeding negativity and giving power to things that didn’t deserve it. I also allowed myself to get too comfortable doing nothing. Work was not challenging in the way that I was used to and instead of using the ‘free time’ that came with a less-than-demanding schedule for something productive, I sat around and slid into laziness and way too much streaming TV. Turns out, laziness breeds moodiness, who knew??

The impact of these missteps was significant and although I feel as though I lost some time, I gained perspective and I’m using that to fuel a new approach to the start of the year. First of all, there are several things that can’t come with me into 2023: self-doubt, appeasing, yielding and/or shrinking to others, dwelling on things I can’t change, comparison, dehydration, persistent bingeing, and most of all, complacency. I am by nature a goal-oriented human being and I lost sight of the fact that when I have a purpose, something I’m striving toward, I am an unstoppable force. Case in point: riding my Peloton 500 miles between Memorial Day & Labor Day despite not doing longer than 30-minute rides prior to starting that challenge.

To set myself up for success, I’ve spent the past few days writing and re-writing my intentions for this year. I created trackers for wellness and to hold myself accountable for the structure I’m re-introducing into my life. What I’m most excited about is I decided that since I’m a writer, I will use language as my self-care. I’ve selected a word of the month that will be the theme for the month, and I’ve given myself prompts as reminders for why I picked that word. Just the exercise of documenting my aspirations and culling individual words from that documentation was uplifting. These words will also drive the subject of my blog so if you don’t see at least one post per month this year, please @ me!

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this month’s word is mindset. By reflecting, writing things down, and charting a path for myself, I’m setting my mind up for a shift. I took the things about 2022 that didn’t work and threw them out. Those scathing, negative journal pages were burned in a purge fire last night. The things I said can’t come with me in 2023 were written on paper and thrown into the fire, as well. Watching those papers ignite and then crumble was cleansing; it was like putting my whole year in a sifter and sifting out all the crap. What remains is what I want to carry forward: love, wellness, joy, laughter, connection, security…and for those tracking my journey, yes a big ass water bottle.

I hope this post finds you refreshed and excited about the possibilities ahead, and I look forward to sharing more consistently with you as the chapter unfolds. Be well, fam.