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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

The Morning-After Post

I’m super excited to have been invited to join a blog group alongside three talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.   


Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

This weeks topic came from Moma Rock, who asked everyone to write about resolutions.  Here is my take:



                  Ah, New Year’s resolutions.  Who among us can avoid the promise of a new year?  It’s the ultimate tabula rasa, a beautiful blank slate.  A do-over.  The turn of the calendar is so full of promise, a chance to start anew.  And many people do, or at least try to.  They write out a list of promises, lines of things they want to do or change.  Quit smoking.  Lose weight.  Take a trip.  Take over the world.  Relax.  Whatever.

                  As much as I get why people make resolutions, I choose not to make them myself, for a few reasons.  First, as much as I love a clean slate, when January 1 rolls around, it ends up being just another day – followed by a whole bunch of other just-another-days.  On January 1, I’m not particularly motivated to do something I wouldn’t or didn’t do on December 31, and I probably won’t stop a bad habit I fully embraced just a day earlier.  Hell, I’m usually too tired on New Year’s Day to do – or not do – much of anything.  And, anyway, if I really want to give something up and the impetus strikes on, say, June 6, then I’ll probably give it up on June 6; I won’t wait another six months.

                  Then, too, there’s the staggering failure rate of resolutions.  In her book, Happier at Home, author, happiness guru, and ridiculously thorough researcher Gretchen Rubin offers the following resolution stats:  approximately 44 percent of all Americans make resolutions, but roughly 80 percent of those resolutions are forgotten by the middle of February, six short weeks later.  More disturbingly, people tend to make and abandon the same resolutions repeatedly.  I maintain that at least part of the issue is that people just aren’t ready to commit to the promise they’ve made but they make it anyway, because the calendar says it’s time.  Just because Target puts all of its Rubbermaid containers on sale doesn’t mean that you’re ready to organize your entire house.

                  But a bigger reason I don’t make resolutions is the unpredictability of any year.  Think about your life a year ago – who was in your life, how you spent your time, what you thought you’d be doing now.  And look at your life today.  For the past few years, I could not have even imagined the changes that would take place over the coming years.  My resolutions were useless, almost funny in hindsight, really.  In 2011, I resolved to write more, and so I started this blog.  I did a few months of spotty, silly posts and then – BOOM! – all sorts of stuff went crazy in my life.  Much of it I didn’t want to talk about let alone put it down on paper, so I didn’t touch my blog for a long, long time.  Last year, I told myself I’d try to do more writing in 2013, maybe one blog post a month, and I couldn’t even pull that off . . . at first.  And then I met someone who invited me into her blog group.  As 2012 turned into 2013, I couldn’t have predicted I’d meet my new friend, or that she’d welcome me into her writing circle.  But I did and she did and here we are, a huge change made without any “official” resolution.  Of course, the tide could have turned in the other direction, too, and life could’ve thrown another series of curve balls that led me away from my laptop, resolution or no resolution.  So much can happen in a year, so much we cannot control, and no resolution can ever change that.

                  For those of you who’ve made resolutions, I wish you much luck in carrying them out.  I’d love to hear what they are and how you make them happen (assuming you do).  But if you don’t, that’s okay, too.  When the time is right – and if you really want to – I know you’ll find the strength to lose weight or stop smoking or quit kicking puppies or whatever it is that matters to you.  And, if you don’t, well, there’s always next year.

                   


                   

5 comments:

  1. This made me think of that pic- the one where there are a bunch of treadmills in a gym, and before Jan 1st, no one is using them. On Jan 1st, every treadmill is in use. LOL! I get what you mean. If you make a goal, why does it matter if it's the first of the year, or some other date? For me, as a goal-oriented person, it's just an added bonus. It feeds my list-taking demon inside me! ;)

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    1. I used to be a big list maker, goal lister, etc. But as I've gotten older, it's faded for me. I always think about that John Lennon saying, something like, "Life is what happens when we're busy making plans." I feel like I've been living that lately ...

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  2. I'm so thankful that Froggie introduced us and that you're part of our group. I always love reading your posts.
    I know I mentioned in my comments on Moma Rock's post about the mother whose son died from Leukemia recently (I also had been talking about him a few weeks ago). Your comment about not wanting to write about the difficult stuff going on in your life made me think about how she blogs all the time about her feelings over her son's illness and untimely death. She's put a lot of her vulnerability out there for the world to see, but people have been so supportive of her and her family.
    Gretchen Rubin is coming to DC next week, but I don't think I'll get a chance to see her. I have been following her on FB but I haven't read her books yet.

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    1. I give kudos to people who write about their struggles. The ones that hit back then were ones I was not at issue to discuss because they belonged to someone else and I was just along for the ride. Someday I will write about my daughter's autism, when she is more comfortable sharing her diagnosis with people.

      I like Gretchen Rubin's books because they make me think. She and I are very different people, and I don't think what makes her happy would do so for me, but I recommend her books. Good reads, and she is a great researcher!

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  3. Agreed. I did make some big changes last year, but each involved something that I decided during the year that I wanted to do, and then started doing.

    At the same time .... last week (when folks were talking about New Years resolutions) a friend shared her practice of taking time each day to write down one good thing that happened that day, no matter how small, and then taking the time to re-read them on New Year's Eve to reflect on the prior year.

    So I did make a note yesterday about how much fun we had following a game trail snowshoeing yesterday morning and how B made a temporary new best friend at the sledding hill yesterday afternoon. Even if I don't end up writing something down each day, I am glad to have taken time to take note of how much fun we had outside on that bright snowy day.

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