Looking Back and Forward (and trying not to get dizzy)

I hate making resolutions and blame it on my grade school teachers. After returning from Christmas vacation, they always assigned a theme (remember those?) in which we described our New Year’s Resolution.

“My New Year’s Resolution is to be nicer to my brother and sister.” Yeah, right. That one didn’t last the day.

“This year, I’m going to work hard and get better grades.” That might have lasted a month or two.

As a kid, I think I also confused resolutions with my Catholic friends’ ideas of what they would give up for Lent.

“You’re giving up chocolate? For the whole year?!”

Despite this long-standing childhood trauma, and because the new year is an obvious point of change, I do spend a moment or two reflecting on the past year and thinking about the year to come.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Periodically, I find myself giving in to one of those crazy human peculiarities to complain.  About my hair.  About my kids.  About my weight.  About the fact that the world seems to be going to Hell in a handbasket.  You know, that sort of thing. 

It used to be I really didn’t notice when I was getting on one of these kicks.  My husband was the one who finally woke me up to the fact that I was pretty miserable to those around me during one of my “moods.”  Guess what?  Now I have a teenage daughter and the tables have turned. (Mom, if you read this, let me just tell you now: I’m incredibly, deeply sorry.)

It may seem simplistic and trite, but I have a couple things I’ve started doing to jolly myself out of ”the mean reds.” I either think about folks who have it way worse than me (such as children with life-threatening diseases or the poor people in the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico) or think about or do something I love.  Today, I prefer to dwell on the latter. 

Now if only I could get my teenager to understand this….