Back Up

When I went to see if I could store some photos from my Mac on an external hard drive tonight I discovered some pictures from my old PC. I wasn't able to do what I'd hoped with the data transfer and will have to find a better way later. Part of which means being better about photo editing and organizing on a regular basis. Anyway I thought I would share this picture of me that I found to be quite disturbing in a lot of ways. 

First I'll point out that it was taken in July of 2011, almost 7 years ago. Second, I have to mention that I'm embarrassed about the fact that at that point I weighed almost 200 pounds. As you could guess by the beer in my hand I had been drinking. I was drinking a lot at that time, it went really well with the whole sailing scene and was a key ingredient in my marriage. Needless to say the beer didn't help with my weight.

Looking back at where I was then from where I am now gives me quite the perspective.

I have come a long way.

I haven't had a drop of alcohol in over two years, I stopped drinking shortly after I decided a divorce was the only way out. I had lost weight when started exercising more and also when I went gluten-free (and switched to wine) four years ago but it was hard to maintain the whole time. I now have stayed around 155 pounds since I pushed the reset button of my life. It was scary to let go of the life I had created for myself and I had a lot of doubts at the time but I knew I had to do something and fast.

It's hard to imagine how I felt then versus how I feel now. So much has changed and I know that I am much healthier, physically, mentally and emotionally. 

I wonder what I'll be like in another 7 years? 

Theme Time

I was reading the book Platform again last night and decided to heed some of the advice since I really want my book launch to be a success. I've been working on my elevator pitch and last night before I went to bed my head started spinning with ideas. I wrote some of them down in the notes app but I'm uploading a hoop video to youtube right now via Videoshop on my iPhone so I can't access it at the moment since I don't have iCloud set up to sync everything. I suppose I don't need that info just yet anyway, I have to remember to do one thing at a time. I seem to always have three steps in mind at once and then I wonder why I get overwhelmed.

Today I am going to start to narrow down the focus of my blog so that my posts are relevant to my book and the message I am hoping to send out to the world. I realize I can be a bit scattered because I love variety and have so many things I'm passionate about. But I need to start building a solid foundation for actually attempting to make some sort of living off of this book that I feel will be of real value to a lot of people. It's a crazy love story with all kinds of lessons I have learned with its unfolding. 

Love Versus Fear is the title and the theme to come in the following blog posts will be about how we can choose to become more aware of how we are making choices in our day to day lives. Are we acting out of love or fear? After reading another perfectly timed blog post by Pam Grout today I think I've figured out how to do this. Her stories are always inspiring and uplifting, reminding me of the theme in her books which I always need reminding of. I think we could all use her reminders actually so I'm going to put my own spin on the same kind of thing and attempt to focus on the love. Why? Love versus Fear is a constant battle we all have to fight and I want Love to win for all of us.

Please, like if you like it, comment and share with anyone you think may enjoy what I have to say.

Thank You.