Resolutions 2011

Answer: “2010 was awesome, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but…. next year’s gonna be a little different”.

Question: What I just muttered to myself, alone in my room, the only one awake in this echoey house at almost two in the morning.

I had a really, really tearful night the other night.  Couldn’t sleep, did a lot of reflecting and talking to myself, and finally switched the light on and scribbled a short list of resolutions for the new year.  I have never, never, never made resolutions before in my LIFE.  No, not ever.  But this night, it just felt like something that needed to be done, and for what it’s worth, I fell right to sleep after I made the list.  Here they are.

I Resolve To

1.  do some reflecting and some really hard thinking in the first few days of the year.  Huh.  Looking back now, I view this first resolution as a means to some sort of end; I want to figure out a little bit more of who I am, and find some ramshackle way of being happy and comfortable with that.  I guess that night, what stood out to me most was just that this action needed to be done, even if I didn’t know why particularly I wanted to do it.  But I promise I will, and I promise there will be a post about it.  It makes my chest tight to think about, because I think I know that there are some hard truths for me to face up to in the coming days, but I need to do it, and putting it down here will help me get those thoughts in order and lend them more permanence.

2. eat more fruits and veggies and keep walking.  The fruits and veggies thing is a perennial resolution that I’m forever making (along with just about everyone else in the world, I’m aware).  The walking thing is a manifestation of my internal struggle over whether or not to get a parking pass for second semester.  Not as intimate, deep, or potentially life-changing as number one, but I still aim to try.

3.  become the girl who reads at work again.  You only wanna know the people who are into her.  Completely tied to number one.  Referencing the fact that I read all summer at work, instead of flirting with people I am actively aware are nogoodniks and only want in my pants.  A lot of the reflecting I have to do in the first few days of 2011 is about how I present myself at work and how I interact with coworkers, because that’s one of the things that’s changed most about me in the last year.  Apparently, I did enough reflecting the night I wrote this list to realize that I want to be a little quieter and stick to myself more in my last four months working there.  Also, this is a killer way to get things crossed off my book list.

4. try harder to be better.  A better sister, daughter, friend, roommate, employee, student, human.  Kinder, more patient, sweeter, more loving, harder working.  You’re kind of lazy and you know it.  Just work on it.  I like the fact that I was very sweet and gentle with myself: here are the facts about you, self; I’m not saying completely change or throw your personality out like the trash, I’m just saying make that effort to raise the bar a bit.  And it’s true.  I’ve become more and more aware lately that I’m awfully spoiled, selfish, and rather lazy, and I know that if I work on erasing those traits or minimizing them, I will become a better all the above.  Plan of action yet to be determined, though.

5. write more.  Nuff said.  But really, I always feel guilty about going on writing jags here where a month or so will be chock full of posts, and then nothing appears for two more.  I said it before, and I think I’m willing to firmly and formally commit to it here: three posts a month, at least.  Hopefully quality posts, and not just two lines about my new shoes or something, but we’ll see.  12 months is a looooong time.

6. try and be braver.  Trust others, make things right with the people you need to, face the future with optimism, a sense of self-efficacy, and your chin up.  I also find it very sweet that I had specific things in mind when I wrote each item in that list, but found a way to turn what were extremely precise scenarios in my head into something more typically resolution-like on paper.  Trust others?  That’s a thing about a boy, yup.  Make things right, etc?  A call to patch up a soured friendship that’s been gnawing at me for months.  And the optimism thing?  Totally about grad school, and totally (and at the time, inadvertantly, honestly) a paraphrase of Elle Woods’ graduation speech.  I am really a wuss when it comes to so many things.  I guess this could have been combined with number four, but there must have been a sense that night that this, in particular, was an issue that needed my full concentration.

And so that’s it.  Six items, each as daunting as the one before it.  But when I look over this list it doesn’t scare me, it doesn’t intimidate me.  It makes me feel hopeful and happy and light.  This is right.  These are going to guide me.  And, if in December I’m sitting here shaking my head at my naivete, that’s fine, too.  I’ll take all that for these moments now when these items are encouraging me and giving me some sense of light heading into 2011.

Advertisement