I know it's trite, but I love the fresh feeling of New Year's Resolutions. I love it. It's so cleansing and full of possibility and wonderful. But the resolutions of my earlier years aren't the type I tend to lean towards these days. Not that I don't WANT to do big, impressive things, but I don't need to anymore, and I don't feel obligated to impress people like I did when I was 25. I'm happy and content as I am, and big changes don't hold their former golden child status in my mind.
When I think about what I'd like to change this year, I'm struck by how little I care about the 'things' of resolutions right now. I'm not particularly interested in vowing to lose twenty pounds or finally figuring out eye makeup or radically overhauling my wardrobe or reading 100 books. This year has Quite Enough In It Already. I am still homeschooling three children, and doing my share of caring for two pets, one quite elderly with more and more challenging health concerns, and keeping house. With all that entails. That's two jobs in itself, but last year I decided to return to school as well, so I have that to think about. My first university course in a decade finished just before Christmas and my second starts mid-January, so I really don't need anything else 'to do'.
My mother's dementia is deteriorating briskly, my mother in law's eyesight is likewise and from our calls to her she appears increasingly unsteady on her feet and anxious in her mind, living alone and in the midst of this pandemic. My father's caregiver exhaustion is starting to show.
There have been personal stresses in my life that I haven't written about as well, things that weigh on me or make me rethink and rethink again how to proceed. And over it all, of course, hangs the cloud of Covid, slowly sucking the joy out of life, trapping us in our homes, taking away the things we love.
Which is all to say that another Thing To Do, much as my Type A heart yearns for it, is not the answer. It will feel good to Make A Plan for a few days, weeks, maybe months...but then it will drag on me and weigh me down - becoming a nice, big stone of expectations. No, I don't think I have it in me to do that this year. Not this year.
However, there is one thing I do wish I was better at, and I would be willing to work on a bit more over the next year. I wish I were....more conscious. More....present. Less scattered and flippity in my interests. I wish, when I walked into a bookstore, that I didn't buy all the books that appealed to me without thinking about whether I would ever read them or if I even already owned them! It is embarassing how many duplicates I own of books, just because I liked the book in the store, and bought it, and then thoughtlessly did exactly the same thing again a few weeks later. This should also give you a hint of how many books I own, that I can repeatedly lose copies in my house.
I wish I sat to eat my food, so that later in the day I could remember if I'd even eaten earlier. I wish I spent the money on things that really actually mattered to me, and took the time to fix the problems that truly annoyed me instead of always pushing those things aside as a 'someday' item that would never be done. I wish I didn't go to bed with wet hair simply because I was scrolling aggravating news feeds until too late in the evening to shower and dry my hair before sleep. I wish I didn't look at my tablet screen in bed and then toss and turn to sleep.
In short, I wish I was more conscious, less unconscious. I want to be more intentional, more focused, less flighty. I want to spend my time on things that actually matter, and to care for the things that I spend my time on. I don't want to have money in my wallet, and then suddenly not have money in my wallet, and be totally unable to remember what on earth I bought with it all.
That's my goal. My resolution for the year. To be present in my life. At least more than I am right now. I might blog about it, I don't know; I won't hold myself to that. But that's what I want to keep at the front of my mind this year - Live The Life I'm Living.
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