New Year's calls for resolution and reflection, and I've done a bit of both on my own and together with the Russian lover. Discussing the year that had past, we decided it was, all told, a good year. Not without its low points, but much improved on many of the years before it. There was more momentum and fewer oh-shit moments.
I'm wary of resolutions, because the resolution of today is often the disappointment in myself tomorrow. Failure comes naturally to a pessimist, because you're more likely to berate yourself for the things you didn't do instead of congratulating yourself for the things you did. I don't think there is anything wrong with asking yourself why the glass is still half-empty at the end of the year, or in resolving to continue to fill it, but it should coincide with a celebration that the glass has been filled by half.
Last year I often felt like I was just being carried along by the tide and hanging in for the ride. There was a certain lack of intention bordering on apathy as I trudged through the days. I was content but aimless. Toward the end of the year I tried to find focus, first framing it in terms of a familiar discipline -- exercise. And I've promptly found myself in a position where that is precisely the one thing I cannot do at all, as I am rehabilitated vertebrae by vertebrae in a maddeningly slow and gentle recovery.
That I'm being forced to STOP just when I'd gathered up my whole being for GO has made me reconsider my notions of GO. And STOP, for that matter. For years I did not stop to address what I knew was something wrong in my body, however vague that awareness was, and in turn my body grew weaker. I was becoming so weak and sore physically that living itself was starting to make me tired; I thought it was just life that was exhausting me, when it was my exhausted body that was leaving me little with which to live.
Now that I'm receiving treatment, I am optimistic that in a few months I'll find myself with even more energy, and a body that can keep up with my intent. Already I have moments where I feel a strange buoyancy, and I realize it's the absence of that subconscious river of aches and pains which has been so constant over the past few years. I'm almost giddy when I consider that this is how I could feel all the time some day.
In the meantime, I've thought of the tweaks and changes I'd like to introduce in 2012. Some are pretty ambitious and I'm still mulling them over. Some are more superficial. For example:
-Drink more coffee. I ran on huge amounts of caffeine for years, but I've tapered off in my old age. I'm drinking the recommended daily minimum, but nowhere near approaching the suggested maximum. Here is where I can manufacture some additional energy while my body works through its issues.
-Buy more clothes. And shoes. Most women need to resolve the opposite, I'm sure. I've never liked shopping and tend to avoid it, which means my wardrobe disintegrates faster than I can replace it (much less improve it). I'm going to push myself to buy one thing a week -- even if it's only leggings or a thong -- to keep fueling my closet.
Bum around the house in sexier articles of clothing. I'm increasingly convinced that sweatpants have become the burka of the West; except unlike Muslim women, American women only cover it up at home.
2011 was good to me, and in 2012 I hope to be good to myself.