Girlies

Girlies

Friday, January 12, 2018

This year's resolution? Not being an A-Hole. I don't like my odds.



About this time each year I write a post about my goals for the next year.  Maybe it’s the 54% I scored on last years list, this year I’m going to be a little less specific about my 2018 plans. 
There’s the obvious goals, marathon running and being less fat and figuring out a way to not be balding and graying.  Those, I suppose, should be tattooed on me somewhere as their permanence seems to be outliving yours truly.  

So yes, I intend to run a marathon this year.  I’m not entirely sure which one as the one I was planning takes place on the same day as a little event called the “Burning Can Relay” which is an activity even dumber than it sounds.  I am planning on losing some weight and honestly, considering the way I bulked up this winter, it’s a needed resolution.  Not sure there is a whole lot I can do about my hair situation, maybe its time to commit and get rid of it entirely, beat God to the punch so to speak.  

I want to play a little more golf, make more time for my friends and family and get a little more serious writing done.  But all of these things are a little more specific than I am intending.  So my less specific plans for 2018…

Have my default setting be “kind”.  Over the last couple of years, the world seems to have become a spiteful place, and its pretty easy to follow down that rabbit hole.  I have found myself assuming the worst of people and I’m guessing that is a fairly self-fulfilling prophecy.  Perhaps it’s time for a reboot of perspective.  I used to believe, and probably still do, that people’s internal compass is tuned to “good” and it takes some effort to steer away from it.  I really haven’t met enough people that defy their compass to merit painting with brush that I have been of late. 

“Let it go”.  Darby would appreciate this one and its relationship to a certain Frozen character.  Along with defaulting to “kind”, letting shit go comes down to the saying “be nice, you don’t know what someone else is going through”.  It is pretty ridiculous to complain about traffic to someone who may be dealing with health issues, or job issues, or family issues or money issues, and here’s the rub, EVERYONE is dealing with something.  And odds dictate that that something is more serious than the line at the grocery store or my head cold. Frankly, I allow myself to stress enough about the petty stuff that it makes the big stuff seem insurmountable.  It’s a miracle I don’t just curl up in a corner and shiver sometimes. 

Get Up.  I used to get up around 5:00 every morning and enjoy a cup of coffee, a book and maybe a sunrise run.  Those early mornings have given way to evening TV and snooze alarms.  Its funny, there are things in the world that make you feel really good and its easy to forget them.  I love sitting on my deck with a cup of coffee early in the morning.  Conversely, I hate the way being rushed in the morning feels.  Interesting that I would chose lazy to productive, but alas, here we are.

Quit waiting.  I’ve been better about changing the things that make me unhappy but it’s time to step that up a bit.  The way I see it, you only get one go around on this flat planet (not sure if that is accurate but I’ve been reading that a bunch of people believe it) and it’s not worth doing something that makes you miserable.  In the spirit of transparency, this is something I have battled against for the better part of three decades.  It may take some work. 

So that’s it, not changing the world, becoming fit enough to be a model or hit ANOTHER hole in one. 

So, if there’s a message here, girls, I suppose it’s to plot your own course.  The thing about resolutions are that they give you carte blanche to make yourself a better version of you along with a little accountability.  It’s pretty liberating, actually.