Lori Duff Writes

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things have been a little bit out of control lately.  We can’t seem to go more than 45 minutes without breaking news.  That doesn’t even count all the crazy stuff that’s going on in my personal life.

Since we’re at the beginning of a new year, which some of us naively thought would be a time of new beginnings, I thought I’d at least start with a new attitude.  So many things are out of my hands, and I’ve made a kind of grudging peace with that.  But I can control what I can control, and by gosh by golly, I am going to control those things. 

Every job requires proper tools.  One of the things I got was a FitBit.  I know I’m like a thousand years late to that game, but here I am.  I haven’t been to the gym in 9 months, because I feel like the gym, with all that huffing and puffing and dripping of bodily fluids, is one of the most likely places for me to get COVID-19.  The blobbiness that has resulted is something I can, theoretically, control. 

Being a competitive person, even if the person I’m competing against is myself, this works for me.  I feel compelled to do better than I did the day before.  When I get a little buzz on my wrist that reminds me that I’ve been sitting at my desk so long that I haven’t so much as walked 250 steps in an entire hour[1], oh HELL naw, I’m not going to lose that game, no matter how low the stakes.

I bought a bookshelf that has nine more square feet than the old, ugly falling apart bookshelf that used to be in my office.  I threw out two big black bags of useless junk in order to put the new bookshelf in my office and reload it.  I recycled about fifteen three-ring binders.  I love three-ring binders.  They are the best kind of organizing tools.

I did so many squats building and then cleaning and then refilling the bookcase that my thighs ached for three days.

I still eat cake more than a dietician would want me to because life is short and the days are hard.  Capping off the day with a cup of decaf and a slice of something delicious makes me happy.  I’m gonna take some hedonistic pleasure where I can.

I’m not calling any of this “new year’s resolutions” because that sounds like deprivation.  Something to work on.  Self-improvement schemes.  Nopety-nope-nope.  This is me seizing control from an out-of-control world in which people are unkind and cruel.  I can’t make people be nice to each other.  I can’t make people see the same reality that I see.  I can’t make people do their jobs properly or be considerate.  The only people I can control is me and, on rare occasion, my children.  I can lead by example.  I can get off my butt and stop staring at a computer screen.  I can throw out old junk, literal and metaphorical.  I can take pleasure where it can be found. 

And, hopefully, I can be happy with that.   

[1] It actually reads something like, “Only 113 steps to go!” but in my head it reads, “Get up, fatty!” which is probably unhealthy, but it gets me out of the chair.  Then, when I meet the goal, it buzzes again and says, “You rocked it!” which I read as, “I’m sorry I called you fat.  You’re really just thiccc and we all know that thiccc thighs save lives” and it makes me disproportionately happy.

If you enjoyed this and want to read more like it, visit Lori on Twitter or on Facebook or read her award winning books.  Her newest book, a Foreword INDIES Gold Medal award winner, “If You Did What I Asked In The First Place” is currently available by clicking here.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.