Whaddup 2016!

So today is the day that I consider myself back from the vacation I made myself take from writing.

Ok, I’m lying. The day was actually two days ago but I couldn’t get out of vacation AKA VEG THE FUCK OUT mode. Ya’ll know how it goes.

I thought about you guys every day that I was gone, I did. What you guys were doing for the holidays. If you were partying safely. What other storytime bloggers with stricter work ethics you might be cheating on me with (ignore that last one).

I couldn’t wait to come back and write more stories. It’s one of my favorite things to do, second only to planning.

Hmmm, planning.

And what better time of year to furiously plan than the first week of the new year, ay?

Since about four years ago I’ve gone through the ritual of putting together a vision board on the first day of every year. The first time I did it I was at a vision board party that my friend had dragged me to that I agreed to participate in only because I wasn’t going to be doing anything the night before (I lived in a tiny southern town and was not ambitious enough to make New Years Eve plans). I had never made a vision board before. I thought they and everyone making them around me at the party was stupid. I was way more comfortable with writing down my resolutions somewhere and then forgetting what they were by week 2, thank you very much.

But my friend was my ride. So I acquiesced.

I put some stuff on there about traveling, maybe relocating, better job, better life direction, blah, blah, blah, then took in home and hung it on an empty wall in my closet (which was walk-in, because tiny southern towns have HUGE cheap apartments), and moved forward with my week.

I saw that damn board every day as I picked out clean versions of the uniform I had to wear to work each day. The time when I laid out on the floor for hours after seeing my ex-boyfriend with a girl that looked like me? Saw it on the way down. When I moved I carefully rolled it up and pasted up again, on my new walk-in closet wall. I walked past it the day I got dressed to take the GRE. I saw it again the day I quit my job in Alabama because I was moving to Chicago. When I had to sell or give away or throw away nearly everything in my sprawling apartment to move into a Midwestern closet, something would not let me trash it. That 30 cent piece of poster board came with me to my first Chicago apartment, where I didn’t even have a closet, but I found a space to hang it anyway (right over my twin bed. Times were tough).

Have you guessed why?

Because the year I made that board was the first year I did anything with my life outside of what was expected of me.

It was the first time I took control of what happened to me instead of just reacting to what happened to me.

Finally, my “someday” became “today” and my old life became “remember when”.

Before then, I had never done anything like that before. Before then I was on a very clear, very boring unhappy path and was pretty much ok with it, even though I wasn’t.

The stupid board worked, guys. Looking at my intentions everyday like that changed my life. Or rather, looking at my intentions everyday helped me to change my life.

Thanks to my half-degree in Behavior Analysis I now know the power of tailoring your environment to shape behaviors that you want to both manifest and extinguish. Basically, if you change your environment to either reinforce or punish a behavior, your success in changing the frequency of that behavior is more likely. Having the vision board to look at everyday helped bring focus to each day, even if it was just a little, and over 365 days I was able to see real change.

Last year launching this blog was on that board. And now here I am.

So know you see why I couldn’t write a post until I finished that dang board.

It would have been finished earlier, but between my work schedule, bad diet (residual holiday eating causing me to nap like crazy), and my overambitious mixology skills on New Year’s Eve I was out of commission until today.

But no matter, my board is complete.

I hope that you have found a way to manifest what you want too.

I hope that at the end of the year you realize how much better you can be than last year.

I hope that the pictures of Beyonce, Shonda Rhimes, and my best friend who doesn’t know she’s my best friend Issa Rae inspire me to keep creating for you guys.

I hope you can’t wait for this year to begin.

Let’s kick 2016’s ass.