Today is New Year’s Eve and I admit I hate resolutions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for improving yourself, but if you know you should change something or you desire to make a change, why wait until the end of December? Why not do it when you recognize it? I could write pages and pages of why I dislike this tradition, but I’ll spare you the drivel.
Instead, I thought I’d like to share three personal things about me that have nothing to do with my writing. Things that if you don’t know me in person, you might not know.
1. In person, I’m warm and very friendly. People comment on it all the time, but what they don’t realize is that I’m very guarded about certain things in my life. As they say, I keep things close to the vest. You might have picked up on that while reading this blog.
2. I am not tactile. I don’t like people encroaching on my space. In fact, I feel uncomfortable when people pat my arm, hug me, or try to hold my arm. There are a few exceptions, my husband, my children, and my parents. The funny thing is that until five years ago, I’d say I was tactile, but my husband and sister started making fun of my “man hugs”. You know the one, where your butt sticks out, your torso doesn’t touch the other person and you pat them on the back. It took me a week to finally admit that they were right.
3. I am not an adrenaline junkie, but I love to Rollerblade. Somehow I don’t think this is acceptable for women my age. I have yet to see other moms blading, but here’s the thing. I don’t care. It brings me such pleasure to feel the ground moving beneath my feet, the tiny bit of air I get when I jump a curb, or the liberating feeling when I race down the hills. Seriously, if you haven’t tried this, you really should.
Tonight when you are toasting the New Year and probably making your resolutions (ugh), I hope you take a moment to remember and appreciate the things that make you…you.
Have a happy and safe New Years and I hope to hear from you in 2012.
I like your perspective. I got tired of making resolutions too, even though there were many areas where I needed improvement.
So, I sat down one New Year’s Eve (it was December 31, 1999 – the day before the new millenium) and decided to choose one resolution that I could work on for the rest of my life, which I thought would really impact my life. I actually came up with two that I felt were equal in importance.
Each year I review how I did on those two resolutions, and each year, improvement is needed. However, I am much better at doing those two things than I was twelve years ago. And, just like I’d hoped, it has impacted my life greatly for good.
What are my two resolutions? Although they are very personal resolutions, I will share. My two lifetime resolutions are saying meaningful daily prayers and the daily reading of the scriptures. I felt having those two habits solid in my life would make me a better person. I think it has.
Yeah, I know what you mean. There seems to be one thing I’m always working on and that is recognizing my limits and not feeling guilty for saying no. Have a happy New Year.
I agree, that you don’t need to wait for New Years day to make a resolution. However, I think the reason so many people (like me) do is that New Years eve naturally has us thinking about the past year of our life, as well as what we hope to achieve in 2012. I was flirting with my resolution (to undergo a physical fitness regiment similar to my character) around November, but I knew that with all the traveling and holidays in the near future, I was setting myself up for failure. So I waited until today to start.
I was recently listening to a podcast that interviewed TV writers, and one married couple does an interesting thing for each year. They give each year a tagline. I liked that idea. Mine would be:
2012: The year the novel of my mind is read in the hands of others.
I think waiting until after the holiday is smart too. What’s the point of making a goal, no matter what time of the year, knowing that you’ll fail due to seen obstacles? And I get that the end of the year causes reflection. I just struggle with people measuring their self worth at the end. Most of the time, they don’t recognize all that they did accomplish because it wasn’t a “goal”. However, I do love the idea of a tagline and yours is a fantastic one. I might compose one myself.