Can we ever change our bad habits? I I took a baby step with an a.m. fitness "boot camp" class.

I won’t call the past year my year of living dangerously. Rather, I'll refer to it as my year of living less than healthfully.

After I got my wireless Internet connection--during the presidential election and GEC (global economic meltdown)--I’d stay up late, past my bedtime, surfing the net for any signs on news websites or blogs that would point the way out of our new landscape of uncertainty.

Then I started this blog, which has been exciting, fun, fulfilling--one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. But, as it’s been exciting and fun, it also gets me all pumped up and distracted from all those other things I could be doing to maintain any personal sense of order.

Not that there was ever a lot of that to begin with. After all, I’m crazy by nature, and become even more scattered and less disciplined when I'm distracted by something crazy like this blog.

In terms of exercise, I stopped getting to the gym as much, and I've been skipping days of exercising. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m some taut-body jock health nut because I am not, but exercising pretty much almost daily was one of the few good personal habits I managed to develop through adulthood. In fact, I came to rely on exercise--even a short run around the neighborhood--to wake me up in the morning. More important, exercise was my own non-pharmaceutical mood stabilizer.

In addition to slacking off on the exerice, I would indulge myself more than usual in food and beverages: snacking at work, for example. And, then, 5 o’clock would roll around. Quitting time looms, and I start to think, it would be so nice to go home and open that bottle of red vino. And then, after dinner, my husband will make his hot chewy, melty chocolate chip cookies.

Then, I stay up late, blogging, and full of dinner, red vino, chocolate chip cookies.

I wake up, still early around 5, 5:30 a.m., but instead of getting up to exercise, I just want to stay all cozy and warm in bed. I don’t get to the gym. I don't go out running. Maybe, I'll stay in bed, because I've got an idea of something to blog about, and I need to get it out of me before I head off to work.

It just goes on. The excuses, rationalizations, the slacking off.

Well, this morning, I dragged my butt out of bed—after having a strange dream about witnessing Sonia Sotomayor win her Senate confirmation—and got to my gym’s hard core boot camp-like class. I’ve done the outdoor boot camp class at my gym. This is the indoor version, taught by the same instructor, and I managed to get through it this morning without passing out. Sure, I cut my usual corners on those evil squat thrusts, and did the girl versions of push ups.

Now, I’m feeling pretty awake and alive and optimistic for the rest of the day, about my ability to apply some order to my day. And, thank goodness, my husband, in his own nod to eating more healthfully, has stopped baking his wonderful chocolate chip cookies.

We’ll see. It’s only 7 a.m. I have to get through the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the year, my life. Change is tough, at least for someone crazy like me.