A couple of weeks ago, my son asked: “Mommy, what is the difference between a cartwheel and a round-off?” As any good teacher would, I thought it best to demonstrate the difference…so I did a cartwheel and I did a round-off.  After my demonstration, my son and daughter tried and I showed them again.

After I had done about six cartwheels and round-offs altogether I felt like I was going to die.  My arms were burning with lactic acid and I felt exhausted.  I thought to myself: “This is so pathetic that I can’t even do six cartwheels without feeling like I’m going to fall over!” The most disappointing part was that I would have liked to demonstrate a round-off to the kids a couple more times but physically I was spent.

I went back to work a couple of days later. Every time I found myself walking down an empty hallway or the sidewalk on my way home, I thought: “There’s probably enough room for me to do a cartwheel here.” I also thought that it would be a very odd thing for me to be doing if someone else were to see me.

I DON’T USUALLY MAKE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS…

For the last several years, I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions. Instead of making new commitments each year, I have been focusing on finishing off other things that I’ve started.  But for some reason, this year I have been thinking a lot about making a New Year’s resolution. It took me a full week to settle on one because I wanted to make sure it would be something manageable, both in terms of my time and my ability to actually succeed.

I wanted to choose something related to exercise.  Since I haven’t been able to do any regular exercise over the past several years, I wanted to make sure I chose something relatively small, that would not take too much time, and that was not too physically demanding.

THE BIG REVEAL

So following my frustration at not being able to demonstrate as many round-offs as I would have liked to, here it is: I am going to practice guerilla cartwheeling and do at least 40 before the end of February. 

Closely related to guerilla gardening (which is planting a garden in a public space at night when no one sees you), guerilla cartwheeling is doing a cartwheel in the presence of other people without them seeing you.

HERE’S HOW I AM DOING…

So far I have done two guerilla cartwheels… one in our main floor room while both my kids and husband were in the room (they didn’t see me!) and the other on the sidewalk coming home from work (no one saw me that time either!).  It’s really funny…and it makes me feel like a kid again! It also gives me a little rush of excitement whenever I pull it off and no one sees.

Inevitably, I’ll be trying to pull off a guerilla cartwheel and I will get caught but so far this has proven to be the most manageable, hilarious, and exciting New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made.

So here are some new guidelines for making new year’s resolutions…. design your resolutions to be simple and to keep you young.

In case you’re not keen on cartwheels, here are some other simple and young ideas for New Year’s resolutions:

• Set aside time each week to color, play play-doh with your kids, or sketch in your sketchbook
• Whistle, hum or sing out loud as you walk to work
• Have a dance party in your living room every day to a song that makes you boogie
• Write poetry, song lyrics, or a short story
• Do guerilla jumping jacks or walking lunges as you walk down the hallways at work

Post a comment below and let me know whether you think this is a good or crazy idea (or maybe a bit of both).

FINAL UPDATE