Coming Soon: ALL THE THINGS!

Getting back to pedaling

When I was in school, the periodic report cards I received were still handwritten by my teachers. There was a report card form with subjects typed in, but my name, the grades and the “teacher’s comments” section all had to be written in by the individual teacher every semester. I don’t remember the grades all that much, but there was a comment that would sprout up each year, during the second or third semester and, teacher after teacher, the comment was the same,

Nicole is inconsistent.

The comment was warranted, from the teacher’s perspective, for sure. There they were, faced with a (mostly) second honors student in the beginning of the year who did all the things, on time, mostly correctly, and then she didn’t. I never went into the realm of failure, but I’d run out of steam or something. I’d hit a lull and need to coast a little. Maybe it was academia mirroring my favorite hobby at the time: bike riding where you pedal, pedal, pedal, then coast, letting the wind and world whip by while the wheels below carry you on a well-deserved speedy ride. it’s an awesome feeling, but everyone knows you can’t coast forever. I knew that in bike riding, and I knew that in school. I always get my pedal back on! In fact, the pedaling after the coast is a huge part of the fun for me.

Anyway, after a couple of years of seeing this same exact, supposedly personalized, unique perspective, hand-written comment from teachers year after year, I figured something out: none of them had the opportunity to see the real truth. The real truth was (and IS): Nicole is incredibly consistent, its just on an annual cycle rather than one that fit the academic demands of regular assessments.

All this is to say, not much has changed, so if you are wondering where the heck the January calendar of events is, or where I have been, or if I just fell off a cliff somewhere, I’m here to say, I got caught up in the holiday coasting, and I think I might have even caught a great big hill heading downward causing it to extend even further than I had anticipated. I’m catching my breath and getting ready to lean into the next big push to speed up again. Are you ready?

The out of town family/house guests left yesterday, the rest of the family under this roof just started their school/work routines back up again yesterday, and I think we are all finally free of the counter full of cold medications we’ve been swapping for the last two weeks. (next year I am going to ask every person to give at least one box of tissues with every gift!)

I am working on my calendar draft and will post it no later than Monday (though I hope it is much sooner). I will also make a plan to finish up the 12 Days of Christmas posts (that first evidence of my holiday coasting was actually more like a bike crash: December 23rd is when the holiday crud took me out!). But the first thing is to physically reclaim my office space which became the unsuspecting space to throw all the things that needed to get out of the way when guests arrived. Tell me, what on earth was I thinking with that move?

See you all soon. Happy New Year. Let me know in the comments if you, too like to coast from time to time and, if so, have you discovered what times of year those coasts land? And, if you are power pedaling through the entire ride, with absolutely no coasting, how do you keep that energy going?