Here I am, upon another 30-day month, and I feel my resolutions grinding to a halt. Oh, forget that. They’ve pretty much evaporated altogether. My postadays have turned into postabits (admittedly, I’m no longer posting everything I write, so I’d have between 2-4 post additional each week, if I had). My weight has ballooned; I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been outside of pregnancy. I haven’t set up any new writing gigs despite being on a creative roll after the WDCE two months ago. To add insult to injury, my other business venture is sitting idle (even after landing a client, who I ended up not working with).

And all those affirmations? Well, let’s just say while I’m not in a negative space, I’m certainly in a purgatorial space. I could blame the weather, but then I’d be banal as well as unmotivated.

But coming back to the 30-day cycle. I wanted to use the 30-day months to challenge myself to a series of related posts. I skipped April altogether, even though I had three posts ready to write. In fact, I originally started this post on April 1st. It began…

It’s April 1st, and I have three choices with regards to maintaining my blog:

1. Skip it… after all, I’ve been hit or miss for the whole month of March. What has changed?
2. Publish three separate posts, because I am so far behind. I have three and then some.
3. Fess up, and accept it’s a 30-day month.

30-day challenges come but four times per year (the primary-school rhyme: “30 days hath September, April, June and November” which isn’t even chronological, for fuck’s sake!). September is an “easy” 30-day month, because it’s the NOFA locavore month. I can do that. Even if I skip a day blogging, I can eat right and feel superior. I DID IT.

I have been all over the place the past couple of weeks, so you would think the 30-day challenge would allow me to focus and come back to center. Yes, in an ideal world, this would be the result.

I have been planning for this 30-day focus for five months. I thought, “Well, I live in NYC. Who better to talk about the ‘hoods than me?” I thought I could put out one hood a day. There are hundreds, so this should not be impossible. However, life and livelihood easily get in the way.

One of my neighborhoods inevitably would be Chinatown. So here’s a pictorial of the neighborhood. Enjoy!

That’s as far as I got. My plan was to profile a neighborhood every day for 30 days. I did get a few photos of Chinatown, but I honestly don’t feel like hitting (the oh-too-hot) pavement… oh, that’s right! no complaining about the weather… to get this in on a daily basis.

So let me regroup and let my fellow writers do the heavy lifting for the month of June. My new 30-day pledge: Blogs that inspire me.

Back in mid-March, Mama Bear Musings nominated me for a Very Inspiring Blogger Award. The rules were simple, but too time consuming for me at the moment:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

So, #1 and #2 are out of the way. CHECK.

#3… lemme see if I can come up with seven mundane (or not) facts about me that haven’t already been revealed previously.

1. I used to hate beets with a passion. Then I joined a CSA and after putting beets in the swap box week in and out, I finally broke down and started learning to eat them. I began with this simple recipe (which really cloaked the beet flavor really well):One smoked duck breast
   1 cup Greek non-fat yogurt (or 1/2 cup sour cream)
   1/2 cup onion (green is best, but any will do) chopped fine
   1 bunch beets (approx. 6 medium or 4 large)
   salt & pepper to tasteTrim, clean and wrap beets in tin foil; place on a cookie sheet and roast for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Allow to cool. Chop onions and mix with yogurt, adding in salt and pepper. Chop beets and fold in. Finely slice duck breast into 1/2-inch cubes, cutting fat as needed. Mix into beet/yogurt mix. Serve as a side or on lettuce as a salad topping.After acclimating myself to beets in this recipe, I eventually learned to tolerate and even like their taste, although I still cannot enjoy them alone without spice (e.g. horseradish).
2. I have a huge crush on Jaromir Jagr from his Penguin days (we met a few times, as I used to cover the Pens). I’m very conflicted about the series starting tonight. My fantasy is 68’ll score five hat tricks in five games but the Pens will still oust Boston in the same amount of time. LET’S GO PENS.
3. I don’t mind heat, but I hate humidity. Oh, wait, I’m not supposed to complain about the weather.
4. I sometimes worry I have early onset Alzheimer’s, because I have a lot of trouble with my short-term memory.
5. If I had the opportunity to rewind my life, I’d go back to when I was accepted to Northwestern’s film school; only this time, I’d decide to go there instead of the college I ended up choosing.
6. If I could live at an time, I would have chosen the 1960s and hung out with hippies making free love whenever and wherever I could.
7. In a similar vein, despite all the crap life has thrown at me, I’m still a helpless romantic, and I would like to believe true love exists and I may find it before I die.

So now I have to nominate 15 blogs that inspire me. But it’s a 30-day challenge, and I’m going to double that. Well, kinda sorta. I’ll start tomorrow, in the hopes that by month’s end, I’ll not only have 30 posts for 30 days, but I’ll have shared 29 other blogs that keep me going when I really don’t much feel that life’s worth living. We all need to be inspired, and I’m grateful to be nominated as someone who does.