She of Three

Viva La Resolution: Embracing Change A New Year

Truth be told, I don’t believe in resolutions. Not because I lack the willpower to see them through, but because 1) I think they’re silly; 2) they’re usually superficial; and 3) proclamations of all the things we will or won’t do conjure the image of a child standing on his or her tippy-toes writing the same sentence over and over on a dusty chalkboard as punishment for a transgression. I will not talk in class. I will obey the teacher. I will work on my attitude.

We have little motivation to do any of the things we claim we want to do, but we say that we do because we’re told we should. As if by saying something enough times, the desired outcome will become a reality. Never mind the work necessary to pull it off.

I’m of the ilk that making small, continuous changes over an extended period of time, as opposed to big changes in a compressed timeframe, yields better results and is less likely to set one up for failure. I try not to indulge in toxic thoughts, habits, or people until they’re so far gone that they can’t be reeled back in. When I allow anything “negative” to linger too long, attempting to make a change feels overwhelming, and I feel as though I’ve already failed. Which leads to apathy. Which is often too alluring to ignore. #depressedinsweats

The pressure is too great when we stack all of our hopes and ambitions on top of one another, and expect that we’ll check each one off a list within a calendar year. If that’s not a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is. It’s no wonder resolutions are abandoned so quickly. I read recently that 62% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, yet only 8% achieve them. Grim, isn’t it?

So, no. As a general rule, I don’t pressure myself with unrealistic resolutions as a matter of tradition. Because everyone else is doing it. Because everyone is spamming facebook and instragram feeds with declarations about how the year ahead will be the best yet. (#gagme) Because we count backward from ten as a crystal-encrusted ball descends a cold, metal pole like a stripper covered in glitter, until it reaches its base, triggering the numerical new year to flash in bright lights while fireworks erupt in the sky. In the background, drunk, off-key renditions of “Auld Lang Syne” can be heard for miles – the symbol of a fresh start, a new beginning.

Magically, the slate is wiped clean! An Etch-A-Sketch for humanity! The past year, but a memory, and we welcome yet another chance to stop being the garbage humans that we are. (Alright, that’s a bit much, but I suspect you see what I’m getting at.)

This year, though, is different. I’m waving my hypocrisy flag (is there such a thing?). Because this year, I’m making an exception.

Rethinking Resolutions

Why the sudden change of heart?

It’s simple. I’ve experienced a great deal of change over the past few years. A control freak by nature, I don’t take well to change that doesn’t happen on my terms. But I also realize that any change, good or bad, often has a way of offering perspective. Having learned from my recent experiences, I intend to keep reminding myself of the lessons they’ve imparted. To that end, I’m making a few resolutions.

Ass Kickings and Other Messages from the Universe

In a short period of time, I lost my job and a close friend – both for reasons that remain unclear. Each left me reeling, although I’m hesitant to admit such because I shudder at the thought of allowing any person or situation to get the best of me. But seeing as being more honest with myself is on my list, I’ll share my feelings on these experiences.

There’s never a good time to lose a job, but my number came up when I felt I was at my professional peak. I was winning awards, leading teams, and building a digital publishing enterprise. I worked at a company for nearly two decades; it was like home. It’s where I met my partner, made close friendships, and grew to consider many of my colleagues family. Then one morning, it was over. I was thriving one day and a ghost the next.

I felt as if I had attended my own funeral. My LinkedIn profile, with its daily procession of views from former coworkers, the majority of whom I haven’t heard from since, was my obituary.

Ultimately, it was a relief. But it didn’t feel like that at first. I knew I wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last person to get the ol’ heave ho, and that it wasn’t personal. But it sure felt personal. Saying that it stung is an underestimation. I careened through the perfunctory confusion, disbelief, and anger that accompanies any loss. I doubted myself and my abilities. I allowed a situation, one over which I had no control, to erode my confidence.

Who was I, even?

The path to acceptance was rife with gaping potholes, but I did make it through to the other side. That’s when I was able to see how unfulfilling and toxic my job had become. I was in need of a change for many years but lacked the courage to do it for myself. In time, and despite any emotional and financial toll my termination caused, I was thankful for it.

Because, funny thing: it gave me the kick in the ass that I needed.

Had it not happened, I wouldn’t be writing. For myself, that is. I earned my living as a writer, which had its merits, but I wasn’t doing anything to fuel my passion. Worse, I allowed the daily burnout of my corporate job to extinguish any urge I had to write, to put on paper (or screen, as the case may be) all the mental chatter swirling in my head – the ideas, the dialogue, the verse. I shoved all of it to the deepest recesses of my brain, where no light or air could seep in, not even through hairline cracks, which forced the creative seedlings to wilt. Perhaps by design. But perhaps not.

I’ll get to it. Eventually. Or so I kept telling myself.

When my ticket was punched, I took it as a sign from the universe to cut the shit already.

I used my downtime to write a book. I’m in the homestretch of completing a memoir that’s been simmering on the back burner for years (and years). One day, the soupy concoction began to boil over, bubbling and gurgling, and sending beads of hot bisque out of the pot and into the air, spraying the walls with stains that looked like splattered paint against a white canvas. A series of tiny explosions went off in my head.

It would have been easy to turn off the burner and let concoction rest until it was cool enough to toss down the drain. I almost did just that.

Whether anything will become of the book, who’s to say – perhaps that’s another matter for the universe to sort out. The point is, I’m writing it. Had I not lost my job and been thrust into uncertainty, forced to examine myself and my ambition, I wouldn’t have achieved a level of self-awareness that’s allowed me the perspective and courage to take on such an immense task.

Courage is not something that comes easily for me. I am not brave. But writing a memoir and, in fact, a personal blog like this, requires full honesty, the acceptance of flaws and certain truths, and the courage to reveal myself. Through this process, I learned that I had the moxie all along. I just needed something to unlock it.

It’s been scary, though. The long stretches of isolation and introspection, being alone with myself and my thoughts, revisiting haunting people and situations from my past, tearing myself open, losing hope, wanting to give up every single day? The despair caused me to lose my mind a few times.

But it’s been worth it, trite though that may sound.

A quote I once read comes to mind: “Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear your path.”

I don’t know its source, but the sentiment is appropos. I turned something negative – in my case, the loss of a job – into something not only positive but transformative. This, I now realize, is what it means to be brave.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

The loss of the friendship? Same. A surprise – no disagreement or fight that prompted a cleave. It just ended. I cast questions and reconciliatory appeals like wishes into a starry sky but received little more than a tepid response that read, ironically, like a termination letter. Cold and impersonal, void of substance and emotion. After subsequent messages went unanswered, it became clear to me that silence, while cowardly (imo), is a powerful response.

I felt foolish, reaching out several times and being ghosted in return. Like screaming into a vacuum, it was an exercise in futility.

I suppose time got the best of us, and I’m not sure why we sat complacently by. Yet I suspect time isn’t the only culprit. A relationship that as strong as we claimed ours to be surely can overcome the dulling effects of time.

The opposite side of the story likely differs; it often does. I can accept that. It would just be nice to know what that side of the story is. Without knowing the issue, I’m left to wonder, which is unfair. It hurts to be written off without reason or explanation.

I still think about it often – I wouldn’t be writing about it if I didn’t – and wish the outcome were different. I also accept mutual responsibility for any role I played in the breakdown. No one’s perfect, least of all, me. My door is always open. But I can’t keep knocking on another door that isn’t. Nor can I apologize for something I don’t know I did.

My go-to reaction in a situation such as this is aloofness. Typically, I’d throw my hands in the air in a gestural “fuck her, then” and act as if I couldn’t care less, as if I were above the bullshit, as if the sudden shift had no impact on me whatsoever. Indifference.

But this was different. The relationship was important enough to me to try to salvage it.

I’m thankful for the good times we shared and memories we created, but if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that sometimes you just have to walk away. Let things and people go. Nothing is permanent; not even the people in our lives who once claimed to be.

Losing A Pet

I also lost my cat. Sapphire was my best friend, constant companion, and the nonjudgmental keeper of all my secrets and quirks. Hers is the most devastating loss, from which I’m not sure I’ll ever fully recover. I wrote about my coconut here.

Change Sucks! (Tell Me Something I Don't Know)

So what’s the takeaway from all of this?

Change sucks!

It upends you and drops you on your head. Forces you to confront yourself, your beliefs, ideals, all the things. Holds your face up to a mirror and shows you that you’ve become the version of yourself you might never have wanted to be. At least that’s what it did for me. Opened up the space to peel back the layers and examine what lay underneath. This type of forensic work is not for the faint of heart. The more skin I sloughed off, the more of myself I feared I was losing – or had already been lost.

But it had an advantage. I learned more about myself over the past few years than ever before. Dealing head on with the changes life brought forth affirmed for me the knowledge that no one situation, no one job, no one person, nothing defines me – but me.

Someone dear to my heart, who was a mother to me in my adult life, assured me of that for years. I lost her recently, too. Though I listened as she uttered those words time and again, shaking my head in complacent agreement, I never really heard her until now. Miss you, Mish.

Defining Truths

My resolutions reinforce the important truth that we define ourselves. A simple concept that I, and perhaps some of you, too often overlook. They are not meant to be achieved quickly – certainly not within a calendar year – or in any particular order. Instead, they will be guideposts along this crazy path of discovery that I’ve chosen (*cough* been forced *cough*) to tread. No doubt more will be added as life continues to unfurl. For now, I have my hands full with these. #babysteps

I will no longer entertain residual anger. It’s a waste of time and energy that can be put to better use. This will be difficult given the trouble I have letting things go and my propensity to agonize. I’m prone to mentally excavating and rearranging the fossils of situations, arguments, conversations to understand the whys, the what ifs, the what went wrongs, the what can I dos to make it right or get another chance. It’s exhausting and futile, and I don’t want to do it anymore.

I will practice self-awareness. The ability to take an honest, objective look at myself, my actions, the way I treat others, the way I treat myself; my motives and desires; and start working on areas that require spiffing up now. Resolutions, goals, aspirations – all meant to be tended to in the present, not later, when it might be too late.

I will be easier on myself. Breaking the habit of putting myself down, acting as my own worst critic, self-sabotaging, will require a lot of discipline. Like self-deprecating humor, I use these tactics as defense mechanisms. If I flog myself first, I can deny interested parties the satisfaction of doing it for me. But that means always being on the defensive, having my guard up, and that, too, is draining. I’m being kinder to myself these days. I remind myself that I can’t control everything and no longer strive for perfection as an outcome. Giving my best is enough. I am enough.

In that same vein, I will also…

Remember that it’s ok to say “no.” Another hard lesson for a this classic type A, overachieving people pleaser. When I think of all the things I didn’t want to do but did anyway, personally and professionally, out of fear of disappointing others or wanting to gain favor with someone or just being too chickenshit to refuse… Nope, not gonna start dwelling on the past (see next section). I know my boundaries and, importantly, my worth. I will enforce both. And anyone who doesn’t like it can, as my grandmother would've said, #goshitinahat.

Stop dwelling on the past. What’s done is done. People come and go. Good and bad situations do, too. Learn from them and move on.

Don’t fear change. As much of a control freak as I can be, I do believe that certain things happen for a reason. Cliché? An oversimplification for many circumstances? Check and check. But for all the stress involved with swimming upstream in an attempt to undo what often can’t be changed, sometimes it’s easier on the mind and body to trust the process and go with the flow.

Keep writing. Write every day. Write about something. Write about nothing. Just write! (And read more, too.)

And most important of all…

Remember that life is short. Take the trip, buy the concert tickets and the shoes, tell your family that you love them, kiss your pets. Say yes (and no), especially when it scares you! Spoil yourself. Sleep in. Laugh often. Worry less (don’t think so much!). Regret the things you did, not the things you didn’t do. Make mistakes. Stop indulging guilt and faking smiles. Look forward, not back. Be happy.

Let life happen.