Since picking indoor rowing back up, I’ve tried to learn more about it than simply getting on and trying to wrestle the machine into submission. If you go looking, very quickly you learn that rowing coaching revolves around the concept of rate, that is, the strokes per minute. Rowing is obsessed with rhythm, and this lesson is something I’m taking with me into my wider life, off the machine.

Steady can mean a lot of things. It can mean reliable, or routine; it can mean stoic and steely, a flinty hard will that endures. It can also be the mind numbing metronomy of time ticking away in maddening intervals. But the meaning I’m choosing to focus on this year is calm, undisturbed, and not neurotic.

I want to enjoy the many blessings of my life, **with out **obsession. I want to go from day to day and week to week knowing that I’m making progress, however incremental, toward the things I think are valuable - rather than lurching from crisis to crisis. I want to let go of my baggage, and settle into to an emotional rate that is low, slow, and seems to swing across the water I live on.

I’ll do this by a few basic actions, like practicing breathing and mindfulness during day to day activities and getting back to some form of professional therapy. But mostly, this year, this focus is about the things I won’t do.

I won’t cross boundaries I set for myself. I won’t chase every barking dog. I won’t pine for something other than what’s right in front of me. I won’t spend time being obsessive, or when inevitably I do have an episode, I’ll promptly forgive myself my own humanity. I won’t flagelatte myself for being less than a superhuman ideal in my head. I won’t seal my true feelings away for fear that they will hurt someone. I won’t try to outsmart anything.

This holiday season has been a grizzly bear, and I’ll be glad to be back in my own space when it is over. Even many moments of joy and togetherness can’t elide the truth now. It’s my life; I have to do what’s right for me and my family. This year is only the beginning of acting that way, so I better settle in and start paddling.