What is your New Year’s Resolution?
New Years resolutions are something that I both look forward to, and dread for the beginning of each year. Every January I set a list of seemingly-impossible changes that I am going to make in regard to my lifestyle and every December I find myself pouting at all of the changes that need to be implemented all over again. That being said, this year I have set some fairly easy goals. The reason they are easy is because in respect to the gravity of the task, each one is either intended to cover a broad variety of situations that I might encounter, or to follow a specific regimen.
The first, and most broad of my 2012 resolutions is to "keep to my word". Simply, I have resolved to do whatever it is that I've said I was going to do. This applies to things I have promised out loud, to others, and things that I've told my self consciously. Being "a person of your word" is something that I have always found valuable in other humans and in myself, but I have often ignored this virtue when it came to my own thoughts. Why should the things that cross my mind not be valued as the things that come out of my mouth?
This also resolves the problem of procrastination. Procrastinating is often the product of setting a personal goal for some sort of task and then ignoring your own rules and putting it off until the last possible second until it could potentially be breaking someone else's rules; such as society, work or school deadlines. If I keep to my word (both spoken and unspoken), I will not be able to disappoint myself by pushing aside my own expectations for my self. Concluding the topic of procrastination-busting, I will also make sure to do something that us humans rarely do for ourselves: lower the bar. In most cases, lowering the bar is not what I would recommend- but in terms of self-governing I think that I need to give myself a bit of a break. Setting the bar too high, or even beyond reach will only result in a cycle of disappointing failures that lead to another broken New Year's resolution.
The second resolution, which is equally as broad as the first, is to be less afraid. I run my life in a constant state of fear and personal judgment. "How do I look? Did I do the right thing? What if ____? Will I fail? What if I regret it? What if other people judge me?"
It is a level of anxiety that is not induced by chemical imbalances but by the experience of failing my self, or of not being good enough for others. This resolution too, ensures that I can't be too hard on myself. It will take baby steps at first; ordering my own food at the restaurant, going out without a companion, etc. But I will get there. If there is anything I have learned with certainty over the last 22 years, it's that fear is nothing more than a waste of time and energy, and judging me for screwing up or looking silly is the last thing other people usually do. This one will help me smile at strangers more, have more fun and say yes to more things.
The third, out of four things that I plan to change, is to listen to my intuition more. The human body is an amazing tool- it tells us when we are sick, hungry, tired, sad, over worked, stressed out, in danger and any number of other useful things that we do our best to ignore. By all means, do what you've got to do to push through studying for a final exam, get to the gym, make the money necessary to live, and definitely do what you think is right, but don't ignore the signs that your body gives you to the point of exhaustion. What I'll try to do is to accommodate, even slightly, for the aforementioned emotions or feelings without letting them control my every move; weigh the pros and cons.
Finally, here we are at resolution number five, even though you probably stopped reading long before now. This is the resolution that has left me typing for the last thirty minutes and calculating a well-thought out response to the question of the day. I resolve to write more. Specifically, I will answer at least three Writer's Block questions in depth each week, and I will hand-write boring details and juicy secrets in a journal. There are two reasons for this resolution. Writing is something that I will be doing literally, for the rest of my life and at some point will even be something that I teach other mini-humans to do. The more I practice and come to do it for leisure, the more confident I will feel about my abilities and the better I will be able to teach children the joy that is spilling your heart out on a keyboard or in the pages of a notebook. Words are not just for to-do lists and greeting cards, they are the most used method of communication and one of only a couple expressive forms of art. The second reason for writing more often is because it makes me happy. There are people in the world, some of those which I know personally, that use words to spin the most delicate and eloquent of tales and arguments. Many of these people, even, sadly, the ones that I know in real life, take my level of articulation and make it look like the skill of an elementary student. Given that I plan to make teaching elementary students my career, this is sufficient but I no longer wish to be embarrassed by the comparison of my writing to my peers' and finishing each page or entry feels like an accomplishment all in its own glory.
Any and all resolutions aforementioned and made for the future can be covered by "keeping to my word", which ironically cancels out the New Year's part of the resolution-making process because it ensures that each new idea gets the time and effort it deserves. After all, I want to listen to my body more, and my brain probably is creating new ideas for its health.
Only the nerds out there can empathize with just having written an essay for fun. =]
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