New Year's Resolutions

It is January 1st, 2012 here in Okinawa already.  Time to start anew and all that crap.  Because let's face it, most New Year's Resolutions end up being crap, don't they?

Lose weight . . .

Exercise more . . .

Be more positive . . .

Bleh.

I'm trying to be realistic in my plans for this year.  Yes, I'd like to lose weight and yes, I'd like to exercise more.  I do plan on trying to do those things, but I'm not foolish enough to curse those plans with the brand of being resolutions.  They're just things I'd like to do and that I know would be good for me.

So here are my two really hardcore resolutions.  I want to write more.  Maybe even finally start my book. So my first resolution is that I am going to try to write a blog post here every day.  Crazy, right?  I go months, sometimes even more than a year, without writing a post here.  But I'm going to try to change that in 2012.  I need to get back into writing, so I'm going to make this my daily writing exercise.

My other resolution is more of a fun one.  Every day I am going to choose a theme song for that day.  I bought myself a blank journal today so that I can write them down.  At the end of the year I will build a playlist in iTunes for 2012.

To start off the year, my song for today is The Catalyst by Linkin Park.  Why that song?  Well, I had a bit of an epiphany in the shower yesterday.  I love it here in Okinawa, but in a lot of ways I feel like I have lost track of who I am since coming here.  I've been sucked into playing different roles.  Of course, it has been my own misplaced sense of duty that has sucked me into them.  I have wavered back and forth between feeling like I should join certain groups and act a certain way because of my husband's position in his squadron, and feeling like I want to thumb my nose at them all and just do what I want to do.  Yesterday it finally hit me that I have lost my connection with Shannon . . . with who *I* am.  Yesterday was my catalyst.

A big part of who I am is being a fighter.  I fight for kids with cancer.  Most of all, I fight for Keeghan.  I really found that fighter when I joined 46 Mommas Shave for the Brave back in 2009.  The connection I made, not only with the other mommas who are like sisters to me now, but with myself when I shaved my head for the first time was beyond powerful.  I found myself again.  I had been lost since Keeghan's death, trying to figure out how to continue on without him and yet still fight for him.  I can still actively be a mom to Mackenzie, and a wife to Mike.  Shaving my head, raising money for the kids still fighting cancer, gave me a way to feel like I was being an active mom to Keeghan still, and in doing that, be 100% connected with myself.

So in about 15 minutes - at 5:00pm here in Okinawa, which is midnight in California where so many of my family and friends are - I will shave my head again.  Instead of trying to be what I think so many here might want me to be or expect me to be, I will go back to being Shannon the Momma.  Shannon the Fighter.  Shannon the Independent.  Am I afraid that people here will look at me like I'm crazy?  Yes and no.  Yes, I think people will think that, but I really don't care.  I will finally be showing this place who I am and what I'm made of.

Bring it on 2012.  Shannon is back.