Since mid-December and with 2014 basically here, it seems like my inbox has been filled with emails asking me about my goals. Did I complete the ones from last year? What are my new ones for the coming year? Am I thinking about what I want to do? Am I thinking about how I want to feel? blah blah blah blah blah…. the redundancy is mind-numbing and the last thing I wanted to do was add to your mental clutter with my version of the same questions.
Besides being annoyed by the clichés, frankly, the stress is paralyzing. Did I meet my goals? Am I a better, more accomplished human being than I was 12 months ago? What do I have to show for my time on this earth? Holy cow, it’s the new year? Already? I have to organize my financial paperwork! April is right around the corner! Did we register the kids for school? What about camp? What am I going to do for health insurance? Oh damn, I’ve been meaning to get that mole on my leg looked at! Will the new insurance cover that? Why did I wait till the last minute? I’m such a procrastinator… What am I thinking??? What am i doing? I’m nuts. Holy crap…. maybe I should just give it all up and just go get a job… Seriously. Tova, stop. Go write a blog post.
….Wow, how’s that for a walk inside my brain?
Truly wasn’t where I expected that paragraph to lead.
But alas, I’m keeping it. I’m nothing if not real. (I won’t lie, sometimes that works against me…)
If this New Years finds you feeling optimistic and making grand proclamations about your plans for 2014 then that is awesome, and the vision of that actually makes me smile. 🙂
If, however, it finds your overwhelmed and melancholy, then go with that. It’s OK. If you’re not up for resolutions, don’t make any. Not up for goals? That’s OK. But if you’re really feeling the need to partake in this tradition, m aybe just come up with really, really little ones…
In college I took a gym class and the teacher each had us set goals for the semester and we would be graded based on whether or not we met those goals. (Oh art school, how I miss you so.) Some people in the class declared that they were going to loose 15 pounds. Work out every day. Learn to bench press or run a marathon. Ya know what my goal was? To drink more water and take the stairs more frequently. (Not ALL the time, of course, but, ya know, more frequently.)
Ya know what happened? I got an A. Ya know what else happened? I drank more water, and sometimes, while standing at the foot of the escalator I thought to myself “Tova, you should really take the stairs.” and then ya know what I did? I took the stairs. And I felt pretty darn good about it.
It’s the New Year. If you’re anything like me, you have 101 thoughts that are fighting for airspace and acknowledgement in your brain. For now, if you need to set your New Years goal as “make sure I laugh more” or “stop letting myself feel bad about what I’m not doing” or “paint my nails once in a while – with sparkles” then let that be good enough… and then let yourself feel pretty darn good about it!
