new years resolutions

by

The Beginning

“The beginning is always today.”–Mary Wollstonecraft (feminist/writer)

My worry and laugh lines are embedded, but I’m still smiling.

A new year, a new you. Resolutions, beginnings, fresh starts. It all sounds marvelous, doesn’t it? And right now, at this moment, I have high hopes for 2023.

Like the past 5 years, 2022 had its challenges and health scares for myself, my family and some of my friends. A few friends suffered devastating losses of partners or parents, and others are waiting for those things to happen in 2023.

Although I expect some awful events to happen this year, I’m attempting to hope for the best and soak up many, many good moments that happen.

On New Year’s Eve, my husband, son and I talked about our goals and wishes for the upcoming year. The husband’s goal? Stay out of the hospital this year. (This is also a wish for him from my son and I!) My son has a few wonderful goals like getting his license, continuing to get fit and to be more of a leader within his LGBTQ+ community. My goal and wish were basically the same: to make and experience good changes this year. That’s a nice broad, vague goal, isn’t it? 😉

I made some significant changes to my life in 2022, including adding two major volunteer positions to my weekly schedule. Each is a 2-3 hour commitment each week, but I enjoy both of them and feel tremendously better about myself as a human being because of the work. I feel like I’m finally paying back the kindness shown to me over the years by paying it forward to those that need it right now. People often say how selfless volunteering is, but for me, it’s really selfish. There’s a high involved when you help others, and it can feel a bit like the running high. Typically, acts of kindness can increase your oxytocin and dopamine, which gives you a feeling of euphoria. This is actually called the “helper’s high.” Isn’t that awesome?!?

I’ll continue my volunteer work this year, but I’m also ready for some changes to be made within my career. I don’t know what this means yet, but I know my stress level at work in 2022 was higher than ever before. Some of that was due to staff shortages, but I also tend to spread myself too thin. That has to change this year. I’ve always told other library directors that your work is not your life, so sometimes you just need to leave this stuff behind, but I did NOT take my own advice. I just wanted my library to be better and better, and it is, but I don’t need to be involved 24/7. For my own wellbeing, a lot has to change there–more delegating, more boundaries, and maybe even a career change. I don’t know yet. I just feel like something big has to change in order for me to continue wanting to get out of bed each morning to go to work.

I plan to continue to run and train for a marathon again. Why the hell not, right? If my body goes kaput, it goes kaput. I can already feel something happening to my left ankle, so I doubt a marathon is in the books just yet. But I’ll still give it a shot. I hope to at least run 500 miles this year. Again, I’ll try but do my best to not be disappointed or discouraged if it doesn’t happen.

I’ll be traveling more as long as the universe allows it. Visiting my dear friend, Becky, in Mexico at the end of this month. A work trip to Wisconsin in April. Hopefully a drive out to the Christmas Story house in Cleveland this summer. Now I need a short trip for this fall. Or another summer trip to North Carolina to see my friend, Monica, and sea turtles hatching?

This year I hope to treat people a bit better or…differently. We just don’t know how long we have on this planet, right? I’m starting to treat some folks like it’s their last year. It may sound like a morbid way of treating others but losing people I love and working with hospice patients has made me look at my world in a different light. During my brother’s, father’s and mother’s last Christmases, I didn’t KNOW it was their last. Did I ever snap at them or lose patience with them that day? I hope not. Did I show them just that little extra dash of kindness? I don’t know. If I did, I wasn’t aware of it.

So, I’m digging deep to find a bit more patience and goodwill for my loved ones. Well, I don’t always have to dig deep, but sometimes it’s necessary. But within that good treatment of others, I’m defining boundaries for myself and for my relationships. I tend to love others with everything I have and I’m not sure I can continue to do that. Or maybe I can. As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about the people I love fiercely, and I can’t imagine loving them any other way. It’s dishonest to do so. It doesn’t feel right not to love them with my whole being.

Huh.

Maybe some things won’t change after all. ❤

Happy New Year to all of you. May your resolutions, hopes, or dreams be fulfilled. If none of those things happen, I hope you feel loved and appreciated. Because seriously, just feeling those things certainly feels like a dream coming true.

Hugs to you all.

by

Just Me

There was a lot of hope for 2021–vaccines, life going back to normal, I was training for a marathon, and my family was just grateful that my husband survived his sickness and came out of a coma in February of 2020.

Some of what we hoped for happened–we got the vaccines, life got better. Then the variants came and so many more people have died and so many people refuse vaccines and life will always be different. I was able to fly to a conference in Nevada and to see a dear friend in Kentucky in the fall, but now many flights are canceled around the globe due to COVID and quarantine times. I had a stress fracture and stopped training for a marathon but was able to run again later in the year. My husband had a widow maker of a heart attack on June 15th and has had several surgeries since. Things got better, then worse. Two steps forward and life looked good, then another setback. Like Anne Lamott says in her book Dusk Night Dawn, “It’s like tucking an octopus into bed at night: new arms keep popping out.”

Now a new year is coming. 2022 is nearly here. I honestly haven’t talked to anyone who is hopeful about it. Everyone is exhausted and burnt out and just tries to get through each day without losing their shit.

We have to find something to look forward to. SOMETHING. As I’ve said many times before, I usually love the new year. I like clean slates, fresh starts, new beginnings, and every other cliche you can think of. Sometimes I think of a new year as a New You (or rather new me). I often have resolutions, but they’re really more like goals. I’ll be disappointed if I don’t reach them, but I try. I’ll survive if they don’t come to fruition.

I’m going to try again to train for a marathon, although I can’t say I’m super positive about it. My body has hurt a lot lately and I’m mostly running to maintain some kind of fitness level until I can figure out what’s what. If I can’t train right away, I’ll work on that 15 pounds I want/need to lose (depending on the moment). And keep going to therapy to deal with that incessant want/need to lose the 15 pounds.

These are things, though, that are just part of my current life–running, losing weight, trying to be healthy. My real goal for 2022? I really, really want to do something new each month. I’ve wanted to LEARN something new each month before, but that doesn’t always happen. That can still be included, but I want to DO something I’ve never done every month. Just once a month. Sometimes it may just be making a new dessert because I just don’t have the money or resources to do what I’d like. But other times?

Here’s a short list of activities I’d like to do in 2022 that seem feasible:

  1. Try out a sensory deprivation tank at Float 207.
  2. Watch all the films that are nominated for Best Picture with my son and watch the Oscars on March 27th with him. Make pizza or nachos with him, too. I suppose I want to try and recreate what my brother and I used to do (although I think I only watched every film for the Oscars once).
  3. Zip line
  4. Get a monthly massage (I suppose this isn’t really trying something new yet making time to take care of myself seems new. I’ve had so few massages in my life but when I do, I always think “why don’t I do this more?!?”)
  5. Find something to be grateful for each day. This is a tough one for me. It shouldn’t be but sometimes I am so Eeyore-like that I can’t get out of my own way, you know?
  6. Get my passport!
  7. Visit new places, especially state parks
  8. Run somewhere new. I’d like to run in a new place each month, even just a new trail or a different road. Maybe that can be my running goal for the year if the marathon doesn’t work out.
  9. Ride on a snowmobile

I have other pursuits, but many I might not be able to do. I’d like to work on my writing, come up with a few goals. Maybe write a few poems again. I’m not sure about that yet, but I do know that writing often brings me joy…or sometimes relief, like a deep breath that I didn’t know I needed. I’d also like to organize and digitize my photos. I have so many pictures of my own and from my parents and it seems pretty overwhelming, although I think it’s the emotional piece that is what seems insurmountable. Sometimes I can face grief head on, and other times I just avoid situations that make me remember. Like so many other things in life, it just depends on the day.

My family and I have joked and said “2022 is our year!” Then we immediately roll our eyes and knock on wood and tell each other to not say that anymore since we said that about 2019, 2020 AND 2021 and look how those friggin’ years turned out! Perhaps our resolution or goal for 2022 should just be to survive. It’s something that many were not able to do in 2021.

Maybe surviving and thriving? I don’t know, friends. I just don’t know anymore.

Nonetheless, I will keep shooting for my “new activity” each month and if that starts to feel like too much, I’ll just shoot for reading a new book each month. That one, as long as I’m living, I know I can achieve.

Good luck to all of you. Be safe. I’d love to hear your goals and resolutions and wishes for the future.

Happy New Year and may you feel loved and appreciated in 2022.

by

Walking the tightrope

After 2017, it’s difficult for me to think about what the next year will bring. It will be the first year I’ll begin without my brother. There are still so many “firsts” our family has to live through without him: the Oscars (last year I watched it with him in the hospital), his niece and nephews’ birthdays, Mother’s and Father’s Day, our shared birthday party (his birthday was 6 days after mine). Thanksgiving was sad and weird. Christmas was fucking horrible. The family Christmas get-together was nearly as bad. We’re all faking it until we make it, but not one of us is doing a very good job. We’re lost and haven’t figured out where to go.

When I started to think about resolutions for the coming year, I thought maybe I could try to climb out of this darkness. Maybe this journey could be something I work towards. But what I’ve come to realize is that this pain and darkness I feel? It is now a part of who I am. It won’t always feel so intense, but losing someone you’re close to can only change you.

I know I’m still going through the grief process and I’m certainly at the angry stage now (and have been for a while) but my grief feels double or maybe even triple-fold. Having Mom live with us has been unbelievably stressful in many ways. I grieve for what our lives were before she came here. I’m angry about certain situations that we’ve had to endure. That probably sounds really shitty and selfish, and maybe it is, but I realized that I was spending more time taking care of and spending time with my mother than with my son. And that, my friends, is not ok.  I have apologized to my boy and promised things will change. And I’m working on that now. But that promise will bring more grief for my mother and for me and for what her life used to be.

So what will 2018 bring? I just don’t know. I don’t have a whole lot of hope for much right now. I do *wish* for peace for our entire world, for my friends and family, and for me. But right now the only peace I am able to find is either in a candy bar or a glass of wine or in a pipe. And that isn’t really peace or contentment or anything real. Yet it’s how I have to survive at the moment. Maybe in another month or so I’ll be able to find some balance so I can throw all of these crutches away.

tightrope

Balance. Balance is what I long for. Sanity would be good, too, but I won’t push it.

Good luck to you all, my friends, in the new year and may your dreams, not nightmares, come true.