I’ve decided to take advantage of some free time I have these days to actually sit down and blog for the first time in months. I cannot be held accountable for the drivel that will make up my latest post; although I should. As someone who loves the blog format as much as I do (I won’t lie – I love the attention – typical Leo apparently) I haven’t done nearly enough of it over the past months. Actually, this past year has been pretty lean for me. Sure, I’ve been busy. But we’re all busy. I like the sound of my own voice so much I believe it when I tell myself I’m too busy to write or any other number of excuses I’ve used over the year. That’s the real trouble with having an over-inflated pseudo ego. One person tells you “you have the most amazing accent” and your own psyche starts believing it and you’ll listen to anything you say.

As many of you know, I am running in the Dubai Marathon on 21 January. I have less than two weeks to go before the big day. I started a training program 14 weeks ago, and have tried to follow it to prepare myself to the fullest. Sadly, I’ve been a little slack lately – through injury and laziness – so I’m seriously doubting my ability to finish the race. A few weeks back I ran a half marathon, 21 kilometers of 13 miles depending on your system of measurement, and I had just come off a slight injury and I hadn’t trained for a few weeks. I actually started out quicker than I wanted to, averaging about six minutes per kilometer. I slowed dramatically over the final five kilometers, partly from fatigue but mostly from running with an injured friend. I finished with a time of 2:13:57. I know I could have slipped under two hours had I kept up my pace and forced myself.

Since that day just about a month ago I have run three times, and the greatest distance I’ve covered is eight kilometers. I’ve been battling niggling injuries and when I do feel capable of running, I make up excuses so I don’t have to. When I originally decided to run the marathon I gave myself a target of under 4 ½ hours. Now, I’m just hoping to finish in the allotted six-hour time frame.

I was running just about every evening so it left me little time to write, or even read the blogs I normally read. Now, with the race nearly come and gone, I can go back to doing more of both. I’ve really missed it. I’ve missed the creativity and intelligence in many of the blogs –some at the same time even. Mostly, I miss the routine of writing and reading every day. Of course the holidays haven’t helped either.

Kirsty and I had dinner for 12 on Christmas Eve (we worked Christmas Day in Saudi) and much of the previous week to that was spent getting groceries and other things to make sure the day was a success. It was, by all accounts. We spent New Year’s Eve with friends and managed to get home just before 3 am, despite having to work on New Year’s Day (again, not celebrated in this country). And now I guess we go about trying to keep the resolutions I never make anyways.

I don’t set myself resolutions. I don’t see the point. I know I’m only going to try and break them anyways. I do like to myself goals though, something tangible that I can grasp on to and hope to achieve. These goals are very much within my reach, something that will require disciple on my behalf to accomplish but I’m not going to have to alter the way I live to do it.

Most of my goals are writing related, and since the only bad habit I have is looking at myself in the mirror and winking, I don’t need to change much about me either. But I will, for posterity, give you my five goals for this year and we’ll see if I reach them.

1. Enter a writing contest a month.
2. Blog at least every other day.
3. Visit two countries I have never been to before.
4. Apply for my masters program (and hopefully get accepted).
5. Meet at least one person from the blog world.

Those are achievable. I won’t feel pressured or rushed to achieve those. Number 5 would be awesome; as there are some people from the blog world I have known for going on 5 years now. But I guess we will have to see.

Needless to say, I’ll keep you better informed this year than last.