For the past few years I have been using a one word resolution around the new year as the word of my year.  Last year the word I chose was Challenge, the previous year was Grow.  This year is Joy.  I want to bring joy back into my life.  I want to bring it back into my running, my work and my entire outlook on things.

Ironically Joy is also a character from the movie Inside Out.  I was fortunate enough to be selected last year to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration in Orlando and we had a sneak peek preview of the Movie Inside Out.  The main character in the movie is Joy.  I connected with her.  She ran the main dashboard in the brain of the character Riley.  Joy did everything she could to make sure that Riley was happy all of the time. She tried to ward off sadness, fear, anger and disgust.  I feel like I am running the dashboard of life and my family’s life like Joy does.

I can’t lie, there have been times in the past year when I was lacking some Joy in my life.  There were some really tough times.  You may not see that in my blog posts or in my social media posts because I don’t show those sad times.  I share the happy events that we are having.  Who wants to hear someone complaining about life and the challenges they are up against or the sicknesses that they are fighting?  I’d rather share my good news than my bad ones.  But that still brings me to my point.  There are things that I am going through in many areas of my life where the Joy is missing.  I am working on that.  That is my plan for this year.  To change some of the things that lost some Joy and bring it back.

One area for certain was my running.  Last fall I was falling out of love with training – not running, it was the training that I was hating.  I was training for my marathons and was struggling with putting in the long runs required.  Something happened, I think it was burnout, that made the actual training runs more of a chore than a time of enjoyment for me.

I just completed the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge a few weeks ago and I enjoy running.  The taper weeks leading up to that race were better for me.  The pressure was off, the longest run was done and the little runs I did prior to the races were to stay loose and to keep my mind from going stir crazy.  Now that I have completed the races I am in a recovery period where I am not pushing hard for speed or high mileage; but just getting out on the road when I want to for my pleasure.  I do have to increase my runs soon to prepare for my next races but I am not dreading the training like I did last Fall.

I want to add Joy back into my work.  In December I was involved with a large project at work that was taking up many hours of my time.  I had some very long work weeks; but I was also learning new things.  I want to feel the joy of trying new things and testing things out and growing in my career.  I had that for some time last year and then things got a little hectic where I felt like I wasn’t learning as much as I wanted to.  So I want to make sure that I still enjoy my work and am growing from it.

For my family life things have been a little rough at home.  I have to be honest.  The kids are fighting a lot; they have been coughing since November and it seems like every 5 minutes someone is complaining to me about something that the other person said.  I just had to pause writing this post to play referee about an elastic band that goes around the base of a toothbrush because the kids were fighting over what color they can use even though my husband did rock-paper-scissors with them to make it fair.

It must be something about the middle of winter making everyone nutty.  Even though we just had a large snowstorm this past weekend and the kids can go out and sled ride there seems to be something wrong with the snow each time they go out.  It’s melting too fast, or the sleds aren’t fast enough.  Where’s the joy???  Time for me to don my snow pants and get back out there with them more to make insane sled riding paths and ramps, start a fire in the fire pit and bring the fun back into winter.

Motherhood isn’t easy, I realize that.  I want to always have a good time.  I know not every day will be days with smiles and happy children and husband.  I know every day at work won’t be easy or fun.  But I’m trying to change my outlook.  I’m trying not to lose my cool.  I’m going to work hard this year to fill my life with more Joy!