Not a lot of time for reflection today I’m afraid. I have a busy day ahead of me. To the world around me, it doesn’t matter that today is my birthday. Today, I’m 44. I am happy to say good riddance to 43 – for me, in many ways it shall be the year that never really happened but also the year that I accomplished a lot in the way of personal growth. I understand a lot better my priorities in life – still don’t know how that will translate to what I will end up doing, but I do understand my priorities better.

My promise to myself this year is to prioritize exercising and writing. These are two things that I love doing. While reading Wild in the wood, as well as various peoples’ blog posts, it occurred to me that I should learn more about writing. More specifically, I should look at developing skills in writing dialogue and improve my skills in storytelling through writing. I understand blogging – and I understand blogging in different genres. What I need to do now is work on writing in different format. Autoethnography has captured my interest. I’ve learned to write in different genres. I’ve been a professional technical writer, I’ve published academic papers, and I’ve been a blogger for almost 10 years. My next step is to actually take on writing a few books. I have a lot of content, but no sense of how to organize it, how to put it all together, how to write it in a format that is consumable and usable to others. More importantly, how to write it in a manner that is engaging to others …

In Canada today, all the attention is put on rodents – Groundhogs to be specific. Today, if the groundhog sees his shadow (Ontario’s Wiarton Willie did not, due to a blizzard) and goes back into hiding, then an additional 6-weeks of winter is predicted. I always hated the way people wanted the weather to suck on my birthday – that way, he wouldn’t seen his shadow, and stay out rather than hibernate for another six weeks. There seems to be no such myth in Northern California, where ‘winter’ usually means the rainy season. It has been another warm January, which has been great for getting out and exercising but not great for the draught.

Today, I’ll be doing my equipment orientation and first session for Living Strong Living Well program – I’ll write more about that tomorrow. Mostly, today is filled with exercise, chores, and couples group. A pretty ‘normal’ day.