Y’all.  I’m just so freaking behind.  I feel like in 2016 - while it was a great year for me personally, and I met a few really important goals - there were some hard things, too, and I fell behind on a lot of stuff, and basically just let my house and myself go.  

My house right now looks like one of those you’d see in the TV show, "Hoarders," with newspapers and boxes piled to the ceiling and when the UPS guy comes to my door with my daily Amazon delivery, I answer it wearing my duster and slippers, my hair in pink foam curlers, with a cigarette hanging out the side of my mouth.

I’m tired of it.  This year has to be different.  

I have to get my shit together.  My plan is to declutter my house and lighten things up around here.  I’ve started feeling more claustrophobic than usual and my furnishings are suddenly way too dark for my taste.  

I’m going to use the KonMari Method, created by Marie Kondo, author of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying because it seems the easiest and most closely matches my style.

Hahahaha, that’s such a lie.  Really, I’m scooping all our shit into boxes because I don’t have time to pee, much less hold every item in my house one by one to see if I feel joy while holding it.

I’m planning to take you along with me and share my progress so you can see this shit storm unfold for yourself.

This will also be the year that I get healthy.  I’m trying to take the focus off of losing weight, and make it more about just feeling energetic and healthy, because for some reason, talking about losing weight makes me crave cheeseburgers.

My friend, Courtney Townley, over at Grace & Grit always tells me that I’m not eating enough food.  Which would make me question her credibility, except that I look at her and I look at her clients and since they don’t have to lift their belly fat out of the way to groom their moneymakers, I think she clearly knows what she’s talking about.  

She did mention to me that it’s the type of foods I’m eating.  So maybe I’ll explore that a bit more this year.  

My third and final goal for this year is to write religiously.  My creative juices run dry when I go long periods without writing.  I need to post to my blog at least weekly, and I do try to do that already, but I put this weird pressure on myself about having the perfect opening line or the meatiest subject matter or an ending that moves the reader in some way.

Know what’s weirder than my niece wanting to drink the “weenie water” (<-- her term) from the package of Lil Smokies when we make pigs in blankets?  The blog posts I fuss over the most, and think are the funniest, get far less interaction and engagement from readers than the ones I feel like I sort-of throw together.

What does that tell me?  That I have horrible taste?  Maybe.

It also tells me that I need to stop being such a self-critical tart, sit my butt in a chair (which is never an issue) and freaking write.

Which brings me to my next point.  You know I went to the Texas Conference for Women in November, right?  Ok, so, first of all, I interviewed Carla Birnberg, author of What You Can When You Can, and I have to tell you:  she is the most down-to-earth, funny, amazingly generous woman.   

I asked her for 15-20 minutes of her time.  She gave me 45.  

We talked about how to dump the all-or-nothing approach to getting healthy (another nod to my friend, Courtney, here because she says the same thing!), about blogging, and about publishing books (self-publishing and traditional publishing - she’s done both!)

I owe you a blog post about my interview with her!  

I’ll have that out this week, and you won’t want to miss it because she had so, so much wisdom to share.

Another fun nugget from the Conference:  I met Glennon Doyle Melton, acclaimed blogger at Momastery.com!  I’ll tell you all about that, too, because she wasn’t scheduled to be there.  She was there with Abby Wambach, the Olympic soccer star that Glennon announced she’s in a relationship with - literally - the day before the Conference.  This was like People magazine-style scoop and I got to meet her!

Lastly, I’m going to share something else with you this week.  I won’t spoil the surprise, but I will tell you that it’s God’s greatest creation and I’ll be sharing all its glory with you in a video.  

With deep and inappropriate love,