New Year's Day in August

It's been a long time since my last post. When my mother passed away in May, it was hard to get motivated. I miss her a lot and even though I have more time for other things now, I found I had a lot more things to do. As Mom got weaker and her ailments multiplied, I had more things to do to help her, coordinate her care and pay more bills and buy more things she needed. And with all those extra duties, I neglected things that my wife and children needed, I let jobs around our house go and I let things at work back up a bit. So, once I had some time to catch up, I had to drop things like updating this blog.

But now I think I'm finally getting caught up. So, I've made a list of New Year's Resolutions to get my life back on track.

Walk every day - I've started this. I'm back to walking about a half to three quarter mile a day. Not much but it's a start.

Drink plenty of water every day. Part of this is to cut down on the amount of coffee I drink, too.

Use my Water Pic and floss my teeth - There were reports in the news recently about how little flossing has been studied and how it was being recommended without really understanding it. But I see the difference in myself and I know this is a good thing. I just wish they didn't call it "flossing". It sounds so useless - like your polishing your teeth.

Practice the piano - Boy do I miss this! Within this, I want to concentrate on two things - I want to learn a bunch of songs that I can just play at any time. Some of this is re-learning the songs I used to be able to play. The other thing I want to concentrate on is my velocity. I've always been good at playing slow songs and putting a lot of feeling into them. But I've always had trouble playing fast (some would say, happy) songs.

I hate to admit the next two things because they are so important:

Pray - I've always done this, of course, but over the last couple of years with the extra time needed to take care of my mother, my prayer was centered on my mother and myself. Most of my prayers were pleas for help. The prayers were answered! But now it is time to start with prayers of worship and thanksgiving and to pray for other people more.

Read the Bible - I always miss this when I'm not doing it. And, of course, I always read the Bible verses for our weekly worship service. But now I'm getting back to reading the Bible every day. It is not a burden but it does take time. But it is enjoyable time. It is enlightening and invigorating.It's like eating a good meal after having fast food for two years!

And, of course, I am going to write in this blog regularly. Here's to starting again.