After writing yesterday’s post, I spent a lot of time thinking about what word I wanted to embody 2019 for me.

I have settled on COMMIT.

I want to commit wholly, fully to what I choose to do: whether that’s marathon training, a clean diet, a hard tempo run, getting up early. It doesn’t matter. And if I can’t commit 100%, with my entire heart and mind, I say fuck it and don’t worry about it/don’t do it/don’t make it part of your plan.

There’s not much I want. And there’s not much I want to do. I want to be a better, healthier athlete. I want to be the best at my job. I want to have enough of a social life that I feel engaged in the world and fulfilled, but not overextended or OVERcommitted. And I want to enjoy my home and my little family as much as I can. Anything else? Doesn’t matter.

This is the case until my 2019 goal marathon race, anyway. It’s in June. I might shift gears after that. And that’s OK.

For the past couple years, I’ve had a word of the year to guide me. I usually stick to it pretty closely until April, abandon it totally for a few months, then come back to it in August/September – birthday/back-to-school time.

I’m really struggling to pick a work for 2019.

I’ve been super into Eliud Kipochege’s ideas of discipline, simplicity and freedom lately. That in order to be truly free you should live a disciplined, simple life. Then the joy, the success will come. For two weeks in December, I basically did this – had a rigid schedule of run, work, gym, home Monday-Thursday and said no to any social engagement that happened Sunday-Thursday – and it was great. It lightened my heart and my mind. But it did feel a little isolating and it’s not super realistic.

But those words: Discipline. Simplicity. Freedom. They feel to negative and too narrow.

This is what I want for 2019:

I want to work really hard on my health and fitness. Commit wholeheartedly to making good, healthy food and making good, healthy choices. To throw myself wholly into marathon training and finally walk away with a marathon PB I can be proud of. Work on my mental health – I sleep like shit and my anxiety spirals out of control sometimes.

I want to be present, engaged and positive at work. To bring my best self to the table every day and to commit to a positive attitude.

While I want to do do less socially – say no to events and invites I am only mildly interested in, say no to things that get in the way of my health and well-being even if it’s something like keeping me out until 10 or 11 when I don’t want to 100% be there – I want to be a better friend and show up for the people I do care about. Do more for them.

So maybe the word of the year is Commit? Full? All-in? Something along those lines: whatever I do, to do fully and with my best self, and say fuck it to the rest. Whole?

I’m probably overthinking this. But this is what I do.

I have this week of work and another Christmas this weekend. So I’m letting my own new year actually start on January 7. I hope to actually have a word by then.

And if I don’t, that’s probably OK. How can you sum up an entire year, an entire life, in a single word?

At first glance, I felt 2018 wasn’t anything special. Maybe even a disappointment. But when I dug deeper, it was clear I was being too hard on the year, and myself. Surprise surprise.

After all, in 2018:

I went to Disney World with both my sisters and did the Star Wars challenge and got the coolest medal I may ever get for a race ever.

I did Ragnar with several of my running friends, and totally crushed the super hard final leg even though I was really uncertain about how that would go even though I was still in injury rehab mode.

I went to Chicago with a bunch of running friends, stayed in a mind-blowing condo and had a great weekend even though the race itself wasn’t anything special.

My brother-in-law got married, and we did a trip through Alberta where I spent most of the time gawking at nature and saying ‘WTF that can’t be real.’

I hung out with good people in big and small ways: had a nice little track routine on Tuesdays, have people to say hello to at my gym, ran with my crew almost every Saturday.

I found the Sweat app and spent the last two months of the year really getting intro strength training.

So, really, not too bad.