Happy? New Year's Eve!

I have never ever been on a date or to a New Year's eve party.  I'm 56 years old and even when I had someone I was dating/sleeping with I was never asked out on New Year's.  Nor have friends ever invited me out on this night.  It has really bothered me most years and made me feel very lonely and sad.

This year I feel differently.  I'm more confident in myself and what I want and this year being alone is fine with me.

I have not, however, set any intentions, or made a journey box, or created a vision board for what I want to achieve next year.  I had every intention of setting my intentions but just procrastinated!  Maybe that's one intention I need to focus on?  Not putting off until tomorrow what I could do today?

I'm sitting here at the computer sipping my glass of delicious champagne with my cats at my feet and I feel utterly fine.  At home and comfortable.  It's freezing outside but warm and cozy inside.

So it's my intent this evening to set some goals down on virtual paper that I can refer back to during the year.  I will create my vision board in the near future but I at least wanted to start out the new year with my ideas and intentions set.

1)  I will have a date this year.  It will be three years on January 3rd since I was last with someone so I think it's about time!  I have posted my picture and profile on a dating website and I will be brave enough to contact someone soon.

2)  I will improve my credit score so that I can purchase a townhouse or condo.  I will work with my money coaches to achieve this goal.  I want to buy a place that I can sell in 10 years or so to buy my retirement home at the ocean or in Port Townsend.  Barring I haven't met and married someone from goal #1 who has different ideas about our future!

3)  I will have a positive outlook on life and continue to share my vision with others through my blogs.  I will continue to pursue my pay-it-forward project and work on my website with the end in mind of making money so that I can follow dreams #1 and #2 anywhere I choose to live and with whomever I choose to live with.

4)  I will work with my coaches following their advice to the best of my ability as they have "been there and done that".  That includes using some techniques that have already been given to me in pursuing goal #1.

5)  I will continue my weight loss journey.  I have been somewhat out of control during the holidays but start the diet back up on January 5th and I'm really looking forward to it.  Ultimate goal is to lose 70 more pounds so that I can look good for my new honey from goal #1 and live a healthy and happy retirement as in goals #2 and 3.

6)  I will possibly...and I do mean possibly...write a book or at least begin a book.  I have no idea how to start or how this will be accomplished but I sure want to try. 

I'm not going to worry about "how" I will achieve these goals.  I'm just going to have faith that they will come true.  I'm enclosing my "Note from the Universe" from Mike Dooley for today.  So so appropriate! 

Happy New Year and kisses everyone!

Kat, soon the new year starts, so now is a great time to:

1. Wipe the slate clean.

2. Focus upon what you really want.

3. Chart your course.

Right?

Well... only if you want to risk having to repeat these steps for the same wishes next year! Maybe this is splitting hairs, but here's an adventurous alternative:

1. Give thanks that life is... just as it is (and that it's been... just as it's been). Because of it, you're now "READY."

2. Define what you want in terms of the end result. Don't worry about the hows, or even the course. KNOW that what you want is ALREADY yours in spirit, by divine LAW, just focus on the certainty of this ownership, understand it, claim it, and "it will be on earth, as it is in heaven (spirit)."

3. LET THE UNIVERSE show you the way via your impulses and instincts that appear as you take inspired action. Don't worry that your first steps seem silly or futile. And if you don't know what to do, do anything! Go! Get busy! Do not insist on intermediary successes, only upon the end result.

2011 is going to be your year (it already is)  ~The Universe

Rejection is Perfection~

I have been rejected by more men than I care to count.  The last time was three years ago and I still have good days and bad days trying to get closure and understand what happened.  I thought he was the love of my life.  I thought it was forever. Even though he didn't treat me as well or with as much respect as I deserved, he treated me better than anyone else ever had.  We were together on and off for almost 10 years.

The last time I saw him he just sort of drifted away.  We had spent, what I thought, a wonderful evening watching a movie, making love, sleeping together.  But he said he had to get up at 5am because he was going skiing with some buddies.  He kissed me goodbye at the door, told me he would call me soon, and I never saw or spoke to him again.  He did not respond to emails or phone calls and shortly thereafter I was sucked into the vortex of caregiving for my parents and didn't have the time or energy to pursue the matter.

Fast forward 2 1/2 years...I was coming out of the caregiving and starting to feel lonely and nostagic.  I tried to contact him and I received a cryptic one line response but nothing else.  I sent a couple more emails and nothing.  So I vowed to myself I would never ever contact him again.  At Christmas I debated whether I should send him a card or note wishing him well.  But I wondered to myself if I was missing him or just the idea of him?

During the holidays I was put in touch with a very wise woman.  This very wise woman told me that where I was in my life was "perfect".  That the fact that I never heard from him was a blessing and all the closure I needed.  She said, "rejection is perfection".  It is the universe's way of telling us that a person or situation aren't right for us.  We shouldn't take it personally and we shouldn't fret over the outcome.  Just bless the moment and move on.

This wise woman also told me that I need to keep my heart open (thus the name of my blog) and welcome all that happens in the future.  That all situations don't happen "to us"...they happen "for us".

So I'm learning to allow.  I'm learning to read emotions.  I'm learning to let go of judgement.  I'm learning that situations aren't good or bad because situations are emotionless.  They just are.  I am learing that situations are blessings and trying to figure out what those blessings are.  And I'm figuring out the next relationship I want in my life.  I'm sparkling when I meet people.  Looking them in the eyes.  Letting my light shine through.  Stating, "hi, my name is Kat".

And I'm staying in my open heart space!

The Scale is My Friend...Really...

I'm always on a diet.  Or talking about dieting.  Or watching Biggest Loser as I stuff cookies into my mouth thinking I should get up off my big fat duff and exercise with those folks.  And each morning when I get up I think...ok...today's the day I eat healthy.  Then I get to work and get hungry or have temptations sitting around the office that I just can't resist and that's that.

During the past two years I put on 50 lbs.  I'm not making any excuses for this.  I just had a very rough two years and combined with depression the weight just packed on.

In August I began a very regimented diet and have since taken off 48 of those pounds.  Or at least I had before Christmas.  But I got a three week break on the diet over the holidays and have taken every advantage I could possibly take including putting 4 lbs back on.  And my ulitmate goal is to lose another 70 lbs.  I'm not a small girl.

I'm not sure why I have no will power this holiday.  Lord knows I try.  I managed to dodge the 5 lb box of See's chocolate that a vendor dropped off.  I managed not to eat any homemade Christmas cookies or candy that were brought to work in the weeks before the holiday.  But my road to ruin began when an ex-employee dropped off a tin of homemade goodies for me two days before Christmas.

I know, I know, I should have run for the hills.  I should have given the tin away without opening it.  But, as my mother used to say, if wishes were horses...!  I opened the tin and there, to my wondering eyes, were 8 beautiful, yummy, delicious, delicate date bars.  Forget about the chocolate christmas tree cookies, forget about the Cuties, and the Hershey's kisses!  Just gimme those date bars!  I ate every one in two days. And I haven't been able to control myself since.

Oh the Christmas dinner of ham and twice baked potatoes.  Oh the rich creamy salad, rolls, and cheesy casseroles.  Add a big quiche for breakfast with REAL bacon and I was a gonner.  None of that turkey bacon and healthy eggs for me!  And to add to all that wealth of food was my sister's famous homemade peanut butter cups and almond roca.  Yikes!

I...must...gain...control!!!!!

I restart the diet on January 5th.  Between now and then I will figure this thing out!  Why I feel the need to mindlessly eat.  Or feed my frustrations.  I want to find other things to occupy my mind and body.  It's not what I'm eating but what's eating me.  How many times have I heard that?  Right....it's what I'm eating...and eating...and eating...

So on the cusp of 2011 I want to find my voice by using this blog.  I want to feel and speak my truths instead of stuffing and eating them.  My throat chakra is kicking into high gear and so am I.  I will download dance music into my ipod and wiggle and jiggle my body until I can wiggle the weight off.  I will hook up my new dvd player and try some of those yoga dvd's I've never even opened.  I CAN do this!!  I promise...  Are you with me??

Contests and Other Noise~

Let me start by telling you where I was at a few years ago.  2008 and 2009 were a couple of the worst years of my life.  I was dumped for the 2nd time by my boyfriend of 10 years.  In the same month I became a primary caregiver for my stepmom who was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) and gave up all semblance of life as I knew it.  I spent two years being a caregiver first to her and then to my father.  I was sucked up into the life of doctors, therapists, ministers, social workers and appointments all to do with the business of dying or, in my dad's case, keeping him alive.

I tried to block out the fact that I had no personal love life.  Let's face it I had no life period other than the almost daily trips to my parent's house.  Add to that my beloved cat developed an inoperable tumor in his spinal column and had to be put down in late 2009.

I was emotionally, spiritually, and physically bankrupt.  Last Christmas was not joyful.  And I developed my own personal health issues because I was taking so much care of everyone else I was ignoring my own well being.  Add an additional 50 lbs over the two year period and I looked and felt like crap.

In the middle of all this turmoil one of my closest friends wanted me to fill out an application for a radio contest.  This wasn't your typical contest where you called into the station and answered some obscure trivial pursuit type question and won two tickets to Emerald Queen Casino to see 3 Dog Night or Smokey Robinson. 

This is a different kind of radio station.  They called it "Transformational Talk Radio".  I had to write an essay to apply.  And it wasn't an easy essay you could b.s. your way through such as "who do you admire".  It was to write 500 words answering the question,  "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"  Then the second question was, "How would you pay it forward". 

OMG.  I had no idea.  No interest in even thinking about it.  My friend had won in 2009 and she felt transformed.  She wanted that for me.  But I was so overwhelmed with my personal life, trying to work full time and not get fired, that the last thing I wanted to do was write this darn essay.  She nagged and nagged so I decided that to get her off my back I would just slap something together and send it.

I picked one of the worst days for my depression and energy and just wrote.  I copy and pasted it into the form on the internet and pushed send.  There, I could honestly tell her I had done the exercise and let it go.

Flash forward 8 months...an email...YOU ARE A FINALIST!   

OMG, OMG, OMG, ...noooooooooo!!  The radio show host called me and we talked for a while.  I told her a bunch of stuff I only half believed and thought...ok  that's done!  She had narrowed it from 400 entrants to 200 to 25 to 7 winners.  And in the end I was one of them!  This was the last thing I wanted.  But how do you say no?  It was very flattering and my girlfriend so excited for me.  And it is turning out to be life changing for me.

So began several months of trying to figure out what the heck to do as my pay it forward project and start my path of self discovery and change.  One of the things I did was start a blog.  Not this one.  A more public one that talks about my pay it forward project and the progress with the radio station winnings which are life coaches, money coaches, gifts, etc.  That part has been wonderful.

But what I discovered about myself is that I can actually write!  And quite well I might add if I do say so myself.  But I feel very hindered and uncomfortable about what I wanted to write on that blog.  My dad reads it for heaven's sake!  I wanted to have a forum where I could really open up and talk about my feelings, possibly dating again, issues with work, and just my life in general.  And do it annonymously.  So I was talking to a life coach the other day and she suggested I start a new blog and not tell anyone.  So here I am!

And I'm taking you on this journey with me.  You are SO lucky!!

What's It All About

I keep pondering the saying "anything's possible".  Is it?  My mind tries to tell me that but my heart doesn't always follow.  I want to explore love, happiness, spirituality and hopefulness in this blog.  Let's see where this journey takes us shall we?  love and kisses...k