My goals for today?  Yea, EPIC FAIL!  I want to get out of the habit of making excuses but my excuse for not completing a SINGLE goal would be that tonight was my day 4 (I have four day work weeks) of night shifts and I was feeling gassed from start to finish.  I did a little bit of the workout goal - 50 pushups (my arms felt like jell-o doing them!), 100 situps, and 50 burpees.  That’s it.

Anyhow, tomorrow is a new day, so I shall set new goals for tomorrow and leave today in the past!:)  But first, two things I am proud of:

1) I am proud of myself for having forgiven my dad.  As I’ve suggested in the past, we went though a number of years where our relationship was really rather poor and in no sense could I call him a parent, even when that was all I needed and wanted.  Even now, I don’t think of him much as parent, which is what - I think - has allowed me to forgive him and move forward.  A couple of years ago, I totally laid all my feelings from the past on the table and it began our healing process.  I truly don’t hold any grudges and am in a position now where I can see better why he made the decisions that he did and that I know, deep down inside, he feels very sorry that he let me down.

2) I am proud of myself for having integrity….always.  I see more and more that intergity seems to be a bit of a lost value, which frustrates me and makes me sad, all at once.  It frustrates me because so often, those with integrity are the ones that get left behind but that won’t change my ways.  I really value my integrity and take great pride in it.

Two things that I am thankful for:

1) I am thankful that I was a resiliant kid. I did not have your typical childhood where I adored my parents and sought hugs and comfort from them.  In fact, in many ways, I was largely apathetic towards them, particularly my mom.  However, the lack of love and nurturing that I experienced as a child did not inhibit my ability to succeed.  I had friends, I excelled in sports, and I had many laughs at school.  I actually never even knew what I was missing out on, until about grade 12 when I’d see my friends’ yell at their parents in one instance and then hug and seek affection from them in another - two things I never experienced in my own life and never realized were “the norm”.  So I am thankful for the fact that I was able to compartmentalize those aspects of my life that brought me sadness and disconnect and instead focused on those things that brought me happiness - and now, as I write this, clearly I was a much wiser kid than I am now that I’m an adult!;)  I need to remember what it was like to push past what made me sad and focus on those things I can control!

2) Similarly, I am thankful for the fact that I was an intelligent kid.  Being intelligent helped me in so many facets - it allowed me to be witty and funny, which helped with my peers.  It allowed me to read situations and people well, which continues to help me in so many ways.  Perhaps more importantly, it gave me the ability to know that I had great potential and that when I was depressed and stuggling, that it did not mean I should lay down and die.  It meant that I was too smart and too driven to let my situation define me.