Goodness52

"There are two fatal errors that keep great projects from coming to life: 1) Not finishing 2) Not starting." Those really don't sound like words that would come from Buddha's mouth, but he still gets credit for the quote. Who cares, right? It's just so true. A year ago, when I started Goodness52, the finish line seemed an eternity away, and it took some intestinal fortitude to see it through to the end. And now here I am. Time to look back on a year that began with running every day for seven days and ended with a little dog coming into our lives . As far as I know, this kind of New Year's Resolution is a new thing. So, getting started meant having the idea in the first place. That came during a run in the first week of January last year, when I realized that running every day for a full year would likely put me in my grave. I settled on something new every week instead, and what a journey that became! After running for seven straight days, I went in...

"Most people I've met who weren't kind to animals weren't kind to people either. Kindness is kindness. Simple as that." It seems perfectly fitting that I close out 52 Weeks of Goodness with sage words from the often-irreverent-but-always-topical Ricky Gervais. A known dog lover and animal rights advocate, he's also currently co-starring with Brandy the rescued German Shepherd in the wonderful comedy drama AfterLife . The show came along at the same time Val and I adopted a rescue of our own, a tiny little scruffy mutt from Mexico who came to us as Julie. And Julie she shall remain. When Gervais says stuff like " dogs will save humanity " I totally get it. They have the power to make us all better human beings, especially when we give them a second chance on life. For us, that meant a local rescue operation called Mex-Can , which takes in abandoned and mistreated pooches from the Guanajuato region of central Mexico. We were introduced to Marlen...

"Keep your friends close, and your farmers closer." Good ol' Anonymous can always be counted on for the best quotes! In this case, Anonymous really nailed it for the week I spent following the 100 Mile Diet. Some of the inspiration also came from author Barbara Kingsolver, who ate locally for a year and wrote a book about it : Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life . Unlike Kingsolver, who produced 70% of her food from a farm in Virginia, I was going to have to do this the hard expensive way. That meant shopping for it. Val and I are really lucky to live in one of the few places in Canada where we can get farm-fresh produce, meat, cheese, beer, wine and more within 160 kilometres of our house. And so the week began at The Old Farm Market and The Root Cellar. Both are known for their stock of local goods. And yes, both are very spendy. I specifically chose the month of January for this challenge, because it's a lot tougher to do in the middle of wi...

"Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention." Fred Astaire, you saucy chappie! Those are some truly inspirational words from the greatest ballroom dancer the world has ever known. But could it mean there's even hope for me, a hopelessly uncoordinated and ungraceful ox? Before I could answer that, Val and I would have to spend the week introducing ourselves to some basic steps courtesy of the Victoria Ballroom Dance Society . Friends of ours joked that we would probably be the youngest people in the introductory class, and that the few people who showed up would be little old ladies. Wrong! We were blown away to see an entire range of ages, and a 50/50 split in gender. What's more, the place was packed with at least 40 people all wanting to learn more about moving their bodies to music. So we started off on comfortable enough footing. Our instructor, Elizabeth, was a real delight. In our first hour-long session, she took us through three la...

"The day after fasting, the music that comes out will be very joyous." I never really thought of Chris Martin as a philosopher before, even though I think Coldplay's Fix You is one of the most hauntingly wise songs ever written. When it comes to fasting, I think he's onto something I hadn't considered before trying it for myself. The release from fasting makes you appreciate everything you have so much more. Kinda like the guy who stops hitting his head with a hammer because it feels so good when he's not doing it. Admittedly, I did NOT go the seven days without food. Let's set that record straight. What I did was follow the hip new trend of intermittent fasting . There are all kinds of ways to approach it, and the one that appealed to me the most was the 16/8 method: 16 hours every day with nary a morsel, and 8 hours of normal eating. Yeah, basically you skip breakfast. During a normal work-filled week, that would be fairly simple, and I know...

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies." My daughter Holly polished off the Game of Thrones books when she was in Grade 8, so she knows about book bingeing. I have yet to crack that series, but I get what author George R. R. Martin means about living a thousand lives. So, with a mittful of Christmas holidays at my disposal, I decided to spend a week adding seven lives in seven days. Of course, I don't think any human could devour seven whole books in that time, so I read the first chapter of each one instead. Calgary's fantastic new public library The week started in Calgary, where our family cozied up in a condo across the alley from the fantastic new public library. It's been raved about by the New York Times , and is now considered one of the world's greatest public spaces. Oh, and it also has books. Because I've been heavying up on non-fiction over the past few years, I really wanted to get the flavour of seven different voices to...