Do or Do Not

So, I've been trying to resume this blog for years, clearly to no avail. I wanted to have something worth saying to make writing a post worthwhile, but also wanted to be good at writing posts so I could say it well.

Guess what the problem with that is? You have to write posts to get good at writing posts. Mind blowing revelation.

Anyway, I'm here to write a post! And here's what I want to say (and no, it's not one of the many things I actually really want to talk about, I'll get to those later).

I. Hate. New Year's Resolutions.

There, I said it. That's what I wanted to say. You're welcome, for that bit of personal information about me that you never asked for. This is the magic of blogging, people!

...Okay, there's actually a little more to it than that. (Fooled ya!) I do hate New Year's Resolutions, because they never work out and it's just a lot of unnecessary effort to change something that I should probably just change. Kind of like the title of this blog post, "Do or Do Not" (there is no try). I get that sometimes making a change requires planning. And telling other people about it helps to hold yourself accountable. I'm just not motivated by those things - if I don't want to do it, then I'm just not going to.

That said, there is something I actually want to do, and because I actually want to do it, maybe posting about it will help keep me relatively accountable to myself. (Not because of you fine people, #sorrynotsorry, but because I can keep somewhat of a log of my progress.)

I want to be able to sit seiza for 2 minutes by May, with no increase in familiar leg pains afterward. For those of you who don't know, seiza is just the Japanese word for sitting down with your legs folded underneath you, basically sitting with the tops of your ankles against the floor. I have excellent range of motion going the OTHER way, and I can squat all the way down with my heels never coming up. But that pointed-foot motion is very difficult for me, for a variety of reasons.

Now, it's not a huge deal that I literally cannot sit this way right now. I don't really ever need to, except for a martial arts class I do during the week, and I just sit however I comfortably can for that. It is a symptom of a larger issue, though, that does interfere with my general ability to move in the ways that I want to. And now I'm signing up for a thing in May that I would love to be able to sit seiza for. Again, I don't need to, but I want to.

So that's my goal that happens to coincide with the onset of 2020. I want to be able to sit on top of my ankles without it hurting. Which means I need to do some specific stretching and some strengthening to back it up. Honestly, I dread it (long story), but it's such a simple thing to be able to do, and I just want to know that I can. So, I'm just going to do it. Maybe with whining and some trepidation at times, but I'm going to do it.

(But I'm also a notorious quitter, so feel free to ask about it and help me out.)

Do you do New Year's Resolutions? Tell me in the Comments!


Update: So, I made kind of a list of things I'd like to get done this year. You can call them resolutions. They're over here. (It's a good thing I like waffles, because I do a lot of it. Maybe another goal should be to stick to one thing??)