Used to be cool to write resolutions as a kid, then it was cool around college-age to declare you would never make resolutions. Self-improvement, blah. Then you hit an age when it's nice to lose (or gain) weight, exercise, and rise to new spiritual heights.
In my late 30s and with two young kids still hanging on me, I'm back at a resolving age, I suppose, but not necessarily at New Year's. I make lists daily of all I want to be and achieve, and buy at the grocery store.
The desk is a mess of scattered lists, which is a direct reflection of my brain. I recall what the head of the said about her office - "it literally looks like Christmas threw up." That's how I feel. I just want Christmas to go away already (the store returns, the tags still poking from clothes, the boxes and boxes of recycled boxes, the needles on the carpet from the dying tree). I also want a lot of other things to go away. Sorry kids, but I do just need…just a minute. Please stop trying to type on my laptop.
Maybe my friend could save me? Though Madeleine DeNitto has a side speciality in hoarders (which I'm not), she spends most of her workweek organizing perfectly normal people's disastrously messed up lives. She is holding a workspace makeover contest, open to entrants in Westchester. Check it out.
I could resolve to be more regular with my Patch scheduling: I will keep posting my mom column on Tuesdays. Like bran-eating, the regularity of a columnist's posts are important. Oh no...it's Friday. See, I've already failed.
I could resolve to be more resolved. There's a good series on Pleasantville's Patch on (to be greener, shaplier, wealthier). For it's one thing to make the resolutions, and another thing entirely to keep them. I think people are too ambitious with their resolving and fail because they can't possibly sustain going to the gym at 6 a.m. everyday as planned.
I could make a resolution not only to be more regular but to be "regular," that is, not such a freak. Maybe it's all the coffee in my system, but I really am a nervous nelly and it's not good for me or anyone else required to be near me.
As I tried to remind myself last week when I was , these matters that consume me with worry are all Very Small Things Indeed.
My new stick-shift car gives me so much anxiety, I would rather drag my wee ones out in the negative degree windchill than face a little roll-back on a hill. I need to get past this.
Then there's the fact that my daughter is three. That's all I need to say to remind myself when she's behaving like a psychopath. It's not me, it's her. She's three. I need to be the big person in these scenarios (when she's having a fit at every minor transition like when it's time to put on a coat or get in the carseat or choose a snack) and just R-E-L-A-X.
Just R-E-L-A-X.
