Jenn came to visit for the last weekend of 2017, and here she is having a side poutine with her beef duet (tartare and bavette steak) at Vert Fourchette. No pictured: Ed having a tex mex poutine, and no poutine for me. Dec 30.
The year has wrapped up. I’m writing this on January 1, 2018 and I made it! I don’t even really feel the urge to rush out and have a poutine today. Maybe tomorrow, but all in all as the year wraps up, I’ve realized that breaking a habit is easier the longer you do it. I haven’t thought about that in a long time.
I’ve been sure to point out that giving up poutine for the year was not about diet. So what was it about? I think there were two major components:
One, it was about making a commitment to something and sticking with it for a full year. I’m a person who tends to pick up and drop hobbies and sports and the like easily but then will fall off the wagon just as easily. So I wanted to challenge myself to a full year of something. Adding this blog was a way to both keep myself accountable to that, but also to pick up a secondary project and maintain it for the full year. On the blog front I’ve not been maintaining my own ‘regular’ blog page for the last year and a half and have been giving lots of thought to it getting a reboot. One take-away is that I need to be able to post to a blog quickly and from my phone if I hope to maintain it anymore. The days of sitting down for 3 hours and crafting a beautiful long-read are done for me, for the foreseeable future. I haven’t decided just yet, but there may be a new writing project on the horizon in 2018 once I work out my ideas a bit more.
Two, it was about overcoming my own desires. I suppose I’m a bit of a hedonist in that I very much live in a feels-good-do-it mindset a lot of the time and have very rarely in my life challenged myself otherwise. The most difficult poutine to give up isn’t my own, but the tiny bite of someone else’s, and over the year this gave me plenty of opportunities to consider how my choices and autonomy are entirely mine, how important it is to be the master of my own destiny, and how just because people around you are doing something, doesn’t mean you should change your mind or path. Kind of big stuff for a silly poutine challenge, but I guess out of simple things can come big thoughts.
So what’s next? I woke up this morning without a New Years resolution for 2018. I am not typically a big goal setter instead a person who focuses on the work. With a big year ahead (including two babies in the spring) I’m not sure I want to set any big goal other than just surviving the year with my sanity. However, 2017 taught me a lot about small goals and that’s how I’ll approach 2018.
