Confession Tuesday: New Year's Resolutions Edition

December 31, 2013

Confession Tuesday: New Year's Resolutions Edition

Wishing you a passionate year...

Dear Reader,

It's the last day of 2013.

I was just telling my daughter that 1995 seems as if it were just 10 years ago. She looked at me oddly and said, "What do you mean, Mom?"

I confess I lost a decade somewhere. I was writing poetry, or raising a daughter, or writing a book, cleaning the house, editing, or mountain biking and I somehow misplaced about ten years.

In certain ways, ten years feels as if it were such a long time ago. When I think that my first book, Small Knots, came out in 2004, I can hardly remember it.

But I'm also realizing my best poet friends have been my friends for over a decade now. I've lived in the same house for 17 years. Things I thought were choices (such as my daily breakfast of coffee and raisin bran) are actually habits.

Which makes me consider my life, and my life passing: Am I living deliberately or what I think are choices are actually habits? Am I paying attention to what matters to me?

Or more visually, like the photo above-- Am I being kissed or am I the onlooker?

~

I confess, I am a Capricorn, so I make lists--To Do lists, books to read lists, goal lists, shopping lists, and of course, resolutions falls in this category.

So today's Confessions are less confessions and more of my resolutions for 2014... And this is just a guide for living my life, not an instruction manual I need to follow perfectly. I'm nowhere near perfect, so I tend not to worry too much if I'm not hitting every resolution, not eating organic, not always exercising. I enjoy my vices actually.

So maybe these are more guidelines for 2014, or suggestions I hope to incorporate into my life.

~

What I want to do is this year is: to continue to live fully with experiences, with others, with poetry and writing, deepen relationships, push boundaries, share generously, be compassionate, extend love, support others, write with an openness, a vulnerability, and continue to stretch myself as a writer.

What I don't want to do: feel pressured to participate in things I don't want to, show up out of obligation and not want, let others control my time, feel judged.

Either way, this is what I'm thinking about on the last day of 2013 as I clean up my office, toss out the old and make room for the new--

2014 Guidelines (aka "Resolutions")

1) Read more longer content, less shorter content
(Basically less Facebooks, more book-books).

2) Consider the opposite. Question more.
Be wary of what the media and people are trying to sell me.

3) Read email less. Write more paper letters.

4) Always discover the beauty.

5) Find myself on more balconies.

6) More walks with Buddy Holly.

7) Less work, more play, less work.

8) ___________________________ (always include space for spontaneity)

9) Say yes to experiences I feel would add to my life as an writer and artist.
Say no to things and people that don't.

10) Be a little more Anais Nin:

I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.

~

I confess, mostly I want to make sure I am participating fully, actively, and passionately in my life.

“Never miss a party...good for the nerves--like celery.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald