It’s that time of year again, when people set unrealistic goals that seem great while in a cheese-and-chocolate-induced haze, but suddenly feel impossible when it’s time to throw away all the sugar in the pantry or wake up at 5:30am to hit the gym before work.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve set those resolutions. Some I’ve completed, others I never began (throwing away food is just WASTEFUL), and some have become a part of my everyday life. But if you know me, you know that I strongly believe waiting for a specific day on the calendar to start a new habit is a recipe for failure. It’s too easy for something to get in the way and the next thing you know, it’s mid-February and you haven’t set foot in the gym since the day you signed up. “Oh well,” you think. “Guess I’ll try again next year.”
I believe that if you take each day as it comes, you can endure setbacks and keep chipping away at your goal.
While I don’t set resolutions, I do set goals throughout the year. For the past couple months my lower back has been hurting more than usual (hooray chronic pain!) and I realized I’ve slacked off on the exercises I learned in physical therapy. You know, the ones that made my back pain go away. Because my back no longer hurt, I stopped the daily exercises, and here I am, writing to you with a heating pad on my back.
When I had my aha moment last week, I started my exercises THAT MINUTE. It may have been a Monday or Tuesday. Not January 1. Not my birthday or the first day of summer or any other day that shouldn’t have any relation to our goals yet often do. And then it rains and you can’t go for a run and the goal becomes insurmountable.
“Melanie,” you’re probably thinking by now, “what is your word?!”
Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there.
In 2024, I challenged myself to complete a triathlon and ended up finishing two. Plus a 5k and a mountain biking race. In 2025, I completed those same races, as well as three other mountain bike races, which ranged from 16 to 33 miles. When my husband and I first started biking over a decade ago, we thought we were hard cord when we biked four miles. This year I got to the point that anything under ten miles didn’t feel like a real ride.
On the writing front, this year I launched my 10th published novel and wrote and revised my 14th novel. I first started writing It’s Always Been You in 2023, but set it aside when I took my writing sabbatical that summer. I dove back into it at the end of 2024 and YESTERDAY sent the manuscript to my agent, over a year after our first conversation about the book.
Aside from the joy and relief I feel at finally finishing the book, I’m also disappointed in myself because it took MONTHS longer than I anticipated. Yes, I have a day job. Yes, I spend a lot of time exercising and playing with the dog and taking care of the house and having a life, but as a writer who hopes to make this my career some day, I feel like this is an area in which I can definitely improve.
Which brings me to my word:
This year I hope to:
• continue building my physical stamina for riding (and general health)
• build my mental stamina so I can focus longer
• Increase my writing stamina so I can complete books faster (this should make all of you happy!)
There are countless ways increasing my stamina can benefit me. My hope is that increasing the amount of time I can focus on any one thing will help my cognition, attention span, patience, and so many other things.
How about you? Do you choose a word to guide you each year? I’d love to hear what it is.
