Thank you to those who have sent good vibes and good feedback. I’m so grateful for your support.

The nature of the blog has also served well to keep me motivated to stay engaged with other intentions for 2010 – I’ve continued to Move More, and even Eat (a little) Less, resulting in net loss of a few pounds, and supporting a general net gain in positive life satisfaction. I like this math.

Even though February is a short month, which might make daily posting seem easier after a 31er, I’m going to ratchet down the posting days this month to just 4-5 posts per week on weekdays. This should allow me to focus on both casting my net a little further via other social media and improving the quality of my posts.

One of the more surprising revelations this month has been the tremendous amount of spam comments I’ve received. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve received but one legitimate comment. Although, I’m actually quite fascinated by spam and spammers and their relentless creativity for finding new ways into our inboxes, just once I’d like to check those comments and find something real.

So this leads to my “special favor” to ask of you: If you are true friend or fan, or if you even just happened to “stumbleupon” this post and you happen to know the name of the band and/or song from which I’ve borrowed the title of this post – please leave the answer with a real “comment” for me.

It would be a sweet and beautiful Karmic Coincidence if I could get 31.

Yipes! I’m late for Hoop class, and it’s a bit of a walk. I must publish and run.

Despite disappointment, alliteration animates.

My little drama-queen in residence sprayed herself in the eye with Listerine breath-spray.

Perhaps understandable for a 10 year old.

I wonder how one explains the other  31,299.

"It says to avoid spraying in eyes!" she shrieked.

And yes, it’s funny because, once again, all’s well that ends well.

Don’t tell her I said that.

So much fun, even I might stick with it. I’ve wanted to learn for several years. It’s been my “intention” to do so, but 2010 is the year!

I listen to a lot of electronica music and started seeing hoop dance performers at shows. Since that first show I thought, “I want to be that girl.” Here’s one of those girls I saw at Burning Man 2009. I was at both the FreQ Nasty and Bassnectar shows. Unfortunately, I never made it to the Hoop Jam.

Thanks to a little Karmic Coincidence (KC) – my friend, neighbor, and belly dance troupe pal Sharon sent me an invite to today’s class, and just to make sure I signed up, KC arranged an encounter with our other mutual friend, neighbor and troupe gal, Melissa, clear across town at a random Starbucks I’d never set foot in! I hadn’t seen either of these lovely ladies in a very long time, so I thought, “Okay, I can take a hint, Hoopin’ is my destiny.”

I thought I’d get a little jump on the class and grabbed my daughter’s hoop. I was mortified to be utterly unable to hoop it up. My 10 year old was visibly disappointed and dismayed, since I do generally have the rep for otherwise shaking the proverbial booty quite well, despite not doing so as often as I should. She could keep it going forever, but my hula hips just weren’t having it.

After considerable frustration, I googled “how to hula hoop” and was delighted to learn that when it comes to hula hoops, size does matter. I was hoping that this would be true and that I was not doomed to hear the constant clatter of my hoop on the floor.

So when I got to class, I picked one of the larger hoops, and what do you know? First try, I came out swinging and kept it going for a good long spin.

Surprise!ingly, we learned a number of other cool moves in this first class. Here’s a peek – from my very own instructor, Surprise! aka Katie Desmond.

And guess, what – she’s also a Yoga Instructor! Very cool. I’m totally psyched for the next 4 weeks.

Some days are more vicious, some days more yoga.

Yesterday was vicious.

But all’s well that ends well.

Today I’ll post two to keep on top of my 31 in 31 Goal/Resolution/Intention…

In the yogic tradition, folks often prefer to think of these things as “Intentions”. Back in August, I wrote a post about Intentions of mine for business and blogging.

But regardless of what you call them, they almost always boil down to a list that breaks down into two categories:

1. Things you want to do more of
2. Things you want to do less of

For example, people either want to 1) get more organized, or go to the gym more often or spend more time with family or even spend more time by themselves, OR 2) they want to spend less time at the office or quit smoking (smoke less) or watch less TV, or stop watching so much damn TV .

Often though, when we begin thinking about the list of things in the Do More Category, we don’t think about what that means we’ll have to Do Less Of in order to make room for More of that good stuff. Huh?

(Unless you’re this guy. I don’t know what you have to do Less of, or More of for that matter, in order to raise an Army of the Undead. Sheesh! That’s seriously ambitious, but right now, it feels like it might be easier to do than losing 20 lbs. What are your resolutions?)

Living Social - Funny Resolution - Raise Army of Undead

So this year, among other things on my Do More List, I have

1. More Yoga
2. More Active
3. Write More.

To help motivate myself for the latter of those three, I joined NaBloPoMo (that name cracks me up!) to help me try to write 31 posts during the month of January. (I’ve got to hurry because I’ve only got 33 minutes left for my Jan 1 deadline!)

For number 1 to happen though, something’s gotta give, and I’m hoping something from my “Do Less List” will help.

We watch entirely too much TV in my house. It’s a regular tension point as a time suck and reason we don’t get things done that we should, but we love our shows, and movies, and yes, we do watch a lot of educational programming too.

But the operative word there is “SHOULD“. I think I should watch less TV because, among other things, it would give me more time to do yoga. But earlier this evening, as I realized that I “should“  both do some yoga and write this post if I were going to make it past day 1 of my list of intentions for the new year, I also had a whole lists of rules about how I “should” do yoga:

• I should do yoga when I’m alone in the house so I’m not interrupted
• I should do yoga without the TV on unless it’s a yoga DVD
• I should have calm yoga-ish music going on
• I should do yoga for 30 to 60 minutes…
• The list goes on.

SHOULD is the gateway to the backstory of why we do – or don’t do – many things in our lives.

So what if I broke all of those rules? What if said I could just do some damn yoga poses while the family continued to watch The Next Iron Chef marathon while I was there with them?

Guess what? I could. And I also got a great idea for another blog post while listening to some ancient Japanese cooking philosophy from The Chairman.

So if you find yourself stuck behind too many “shoulds,” try “could” in its place, and see what possibilites open up for you instead.