Resolution Time

Another year has passed, time to dust off the old blog.  A lot has changed in my life since the last time I sat down to write.  Life has done a good job of keeping me busy.  But with the New Year comes the opportunity for setting goals. 

Resolution #1: I would like to write a post once a month.

I find that I enjoy my life more when I have to opportunity to sit down and write out my experiences.  Maybe its like counting my blessings.  I was never great at that, personally, it was anxiety inducing, like, hmm, what am I forgetting?! When you think about it we are pretty darn blessed.  I was also never good at journaling, I get into my head as a narrator and wonder what my "voice" should sound like. Where is this storyline going? This time I'm going to give myself a break. Does it have to be perfect? NO! Does it have to be coherent? Not even! It just has to be mine.  Me putting my words down in an effort to make sense of what is going on in my goings on.  What will I write about?  WHATEVER I WANT! 

Resolution #2: I would like to read more.

I tried watching the first season of Black Mirror and was so thoroughly shaken that I had to call my husband.  As soon as he came home I made him watch the two episodes that I had watched, while I curled  in a ball in the corner peeking from between asking is it over? He made it through the episodes without any crisis or soul shattering anxiety for the future. But me, I still refuse to watch more of the show. I rarely refer to myself as sensitive but in regards to the digestion of media, that's exactly what I am.  Ideas and emotions seep into the open pores of my being and I become shellshocked from news articles and TV shows.  What's the solution? Well I don't know if there is one. But I can think of a resolution! Read more. That means reading more fiction AND nonfiction. Going to the library. Taking moments of solace in the sweet close air between stacks of books.  Listening to the calm that all those pages absorb.  And learning.  Keeping my vocabulary skills sharp. Feeding my mind with more than BuzzFeed articles and melodramas. Practicing the art of mono-tasking.  Devoting all of my attention to one thing.  Giving my imagination space to stretch, walk, run, maybe do some tumbling. Reading has always been one of my all time favorite activities. And yet it is one of the first things I sacrifice on a daily basis in favor of making school lunches, doing laundry, yadda yadda, fill in the blank with menial mom duty.  NO MORE! I want to take back more beloved literature.  Here's to a new year of page-turning thrills and invigoration!

Resolution #3: I would like to research the heck out of projects before diving in.

One of the biggest lies I have ever told myself is that I "learn by doing".  It's not a complete falsehood.  But I think there has to be a better way that doing something wrong first to learn how to do it right.  This year I'm going to try to break that habit.  Let Resolution #2 inform me before tackling new projects.  The most fun, I have found, is in the planning stage of a project.  I love envisioning and sketching what could be.  The actualization is okay too.  But while the idea is still just a scribble on a piece of graph paper the possibilities are endless. Nothing too big or small, nothing too extravagant or too picky.  I want to feed that itch.  I want to design and research and sketch and research and doodle and research and throw it out to start over.

Cheers, cue the bullhorn, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2018!