The EIGHTEEN. Prepping for a New Year!

Hello? Is anybody out there? {insert the sound of crickets} 

If you are there... and you are reading this... I know I don't deserve you in my life, but I'm awfully glad to see you. I'm sorry  that I haven't posted since September 1st, gulp, but I finally have a bit of a hiatus from work so I wanted to dash straight over and catch up with you.

What's been going on for you? You still working out? How are you feeling? Reading any good books? There is soooooo much to tell you, where to start? Well for one, I'm reading DreadfulWater, A Mystery by the brilliant Thomas King. DreadfulWater is the name of the detective, and yes it's one word and yes the W is capitalized.

Okay so here's the cliff notes version of what's been going on over here.

I've "glitterally" {that'd be the word literally glammed up, it's a thing - thanks for that Myla} been working non-stop and unable to catch my breath. I'm in my third straight television show writer's room this year so I have been writing, just not on here. Finally found myself a legit doctor and turns out I am hypothyroid, but it's cool, she's got me on some meds and while I'm not a fan of pharma - thyroid hormone is something our super cool awesome bodies already make, so it's not as though I'm adding in a foreign thing that my lil bod doesn't know what to do with. And my heart is acting out. I have an arrhythmia of sorts, but rather than being a regularly irregular heart beat {which I think you can treat} I have some sort of irregularly irregular heart beat. Of course I do. Gasp. In any case, I'm working on sorting it out.

Still love love loving LEKfit. Gurl you know she makes me feel like a superfly yogi ballerina amazonian chick. So grateful. In fact, I may even treat myself to some real fancy type leggings in The EIGHTEEN. Yep, it's what I'm calling the new year. It makes it sound sorta terrific and fab dontcha think?

So what do YOU have planned for it? I will not let you allow The EIGHTEEN to simply "creep in like a creeping post-Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine and threatening New Year's doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe!" Totally ripped that off from the first line of Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel btdubs. If you've never read the book, get it, read it, love it and become a die-hard fan forevah!

Anyhoo, I won't won't won't let you ring in the new year without at least trying something new. Don't care what it is. You do you sister. But I do want to share with you what Ima do.

If you're anything like me, every time you tune into the news or click on the internet some bad shit is going down and it can make you feel hopeless and horrible. Like WTF is the point of even trying. Our environment is being destroyed via pipelines and the shrinking of national monuments, crazy fires and wildfires rage and wreak havoc, gun violence is so rampant it makes your soul ache, seemingly every man in any kind of position of power has abused that power by abusing the women below him - gawd! Make it all stop! It can be so overwhelming that you might think what can I as one person do? How can I make a change? How can I contribute to the end of suffering and up the compassion quota? How can I do my part to save our planet? Well love, I don't have THEE one and only answer that will solve our every problem, but I do have something that you could do to actively make a difference in a really big way - you can switch to a plant based diet. Don't gasp. Or do, your call. But please don't tune out or turn away. Hear me out. It doesn't have to be a forever thing, or a permanent thing, you can try it for one meal a day, or one day a week, or one week a month, or one month a year - hell who knows you might even feel so good you do decide to make it a forever thing. 

I can hear you now "whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses there crazy lady, I don't wanna give up my cheese, bacon, salmon, cheesecake... insert animal based product here." Believe me, I know it's hard. If it wasn't, we'd all be vegan by now. And trust me, I hear your list of reasons why it isn't a good idea for you - I need meat because I'm anemic, no really, I am. Where will I get my protein? I simply cannot live without my ice cream. Hey! If I can give up ice cream - which I did well over a year ago when I gave up sugar - then ANYONE can give up ice cream. It's not going to be easy, but starting in January, for at LEAST the month of January - I am going to go plant-based. You'll notice that I'm not going to try to tackle this during Christmas. I don't want to give up my Bailey's. I'm right there with you, but we can dooooooooooooooooo eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!! And the good news is we don't have to do it alone.

If you were with me back in the Mastering The Method days, you know I'm all about community support. We did the Method together -tackling Metamorphosis as a team. We can do this together too. It'll just be for a month, right? And it'll kinda be like old times! Me and you banding together swapping recipes, crying over spilled milk {as it's being poured down the drain}, celebrating being cruelty-free, counting the number of animals we've saved by not eating them, exchanging leads on cruelty-free clothes, cosmetics, cleaning supplies and all sorts of cool stuff. If that weren't enough, there's even a company who has made it their mission to support us by sending us tips, tricks and motivation to stay the course called VEGANUARY .

They've done this all before and have this shit down to a science y'all. Going vegan in January - Veganuary - kinda genius really. 

But first things first. We need motivation. One thing that really saved me when I decided to go sugar free, was really knowing why I was doing it. Like setting any goal, if you have a list of positive reasons for doing something, you can lean on those when the going gets tough and you just want to cave and take a nose dive into a giant vat of Ben & Jerry's. Watching That Sugar Film was an absolute game-changer. It allowed me to say, "so long sucker" for realz.

I want that same kind of inspiration for this next leg of the journey toward good health and a happy healthy planet, but I'm wary. I'm not one of these people that needs to be convinced that there is cruelty in the meat and dairy industry. I KNOW there is. I'm "the faint-of-heart" type who cannot see torture and whatnot. I don't need that to be convinced that I need to make a change, but if you do... then I'd recommend that you watch the film that made Ellen Degeneres switch to a plant based diet - Earthlings again, warnings this does contain graphic content.

BUT... If you're like me and you just need a bit of convincing that yes, this is the ethical choice, the health-based choice, the salvation of our planet-based choice, not the hardest choice in the world based choice - then here is a list of documentary films that I've compiled and plan to watch over the holidays and I'm told by the good folks in the googlesphere  -- do NOT contain a shit-ton of graphic footage but are more about information sharing. Knowledge is power people, never forget that.

So here's my list so far. If you have non-graphic titles to add - please do so in the comments below.
Live and Let Live
Vegan
Vegucated
Peaceable Kingdom
What the Health
Forks Over Knives

And who among us needs an excuse to purchase a new cookbook? I sure don't. And I didn't want to take this challenge completely unarmed. While I do own a couple of books by Kimberly Snyder --

Not to mention the lovely Ella Woodward 

I felt like I wanted to branch out into even simpler and more fun food recipes, so I have ordered a couple of new titles - 

Angela Liddon's 

And two books from the hilarious duo over at Thug Kitchen

And oh Lordy Lord help me if He Who Shall Not Be Named is reading this - that's Christmas ruined. My beloved went plant based nearly two years ago and one of these is for him, so Babe! If you're reading this, stoppit. You're ruining Christmas. I ordered him a special Vegan Advent Calendar for the holidays. It had to come from England and took six weeks to ship. The bastard ate the whole thing by December 7th!!!! Grrrr.

Alrighty then, I think this wraps up our New Year's prep episode, wouldn't you say? You gotta be tired of reading by now right? I'm getting kinda tired of writing, but more than that, my dog is looking at me with crossed paws and is doing is own puppy version of the pee pee dance so I best be getting on.

I've loved being here with you today and sharing the roll out plan for The EIGHTEEN. Hope you don't leave me hanging. Join in with me and leave your thoughts in the comments below. I adore hearing from you.

With respect,
Shan