Jan022009
No Resolutions This Year
Filed under Self by Kim at 7:09 pm on Jan 02 2009
I really set myself up for failure in 2008; I had all sorts of very rigid ideas about how to conduct myself, which was pretty ironic considering I hadn’t conducted myself that way at all in 2007 but had been really, really happy. I think at the time I felt I had a ball rolling and that I’d use that momentum to enforce some things on myself I considered “good habits”. In fact, my daily orders are still up on my whiteboard in rainbow splendor, none of them perfectly achieved.
I did floss more and pay my bills on time and check my bank balance, I just didn’t do that stuff every day. Well, it worked out just fine; no new cavities and I managed to pay down my student loan debt extra and save some money. I didn’t meditate every day, and I certainly didn’t play the drums every day, in fact my frustration at feeling like such a failure at it was pretty intense and in the end I put school as a priority and quit lessons.
Instead I’d say if I have any advice for myself in the coming year it would be to be present. I sort of asked the same thing of myself last year but I also hung out all these weird expectations on myself.
The best changes in my life have come about kind of spontaneously, like deciding to go back to school for nursing. That certainly didn’t happen in January. Or finding my new favorite band and deciding I wanted to learn to play drums – that happened in the summer or fall! In fact I bet if I looked back, I’d find the best self-motivated initiations of effort happened when the weather was much finer than this.
Oh well, I’m sure in a few years I’ll forget how fruitless I thought it was and be ready for the festive annual self-recrimination.
