Well, it seems I’ve returned to my blogiverse – I’m not sure why I’ve had so much trouble keeping up lately.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
You see, I’ve fallen into a pit. You know – the pit of being really busy. I think we all fall into that pit sometimes. Between work, working out, cooking, and being the social butterfly that I am – well, I seem to have forgotten about all this. It’s a shame, though. Writing feels so good. Doesn’t it just feel good to use your brain a little, to look around, take stock, and reflect on what you see? That’s usually how I feel – and yet, once again, I have put it off.
During the transition to the new year, I got to thinking about resolutions. It’s inevitable – it’s like resolutions are in the air around us, as magazines and Facebook statuses swirl with ambitions and hopes for the new year to come. I’ve always wondered why we have this tradition of making resolutions at the start of the year. I mean, on the one hand, it’s fairly obvious: a new calendar year, a chance to remake ourselves, to think that we’re really going to do it this time. I think that I have made the same damn resolution for 10 years in a row. But that’s because the resolutions I make are not realistic. It’s always like “starting today, I’m going to be a better person.” What does that even mean?! I – we all – set ridiculous expectations for myself sometimes. It’s only human, I think, to want to be the best that we can be. But sometimes the best we can be doesn’t feel like it measures up. Which brings me to the other hand: it’s seems so empty, to make these promises to ourselves that we can’t/don’t follow through with. We were watching football (well… I wasn’t…), and a news update popped up announcing some absurd statistic of people who made resolutions and proclaimed that they had already broken them by the next day.
I recently came across this article in the New York Times. It’s about how hard it is to lose weight, and includes a study of people who were successful on an extremely restrictive diet (500 calories a day). They lost 30 pounds in a matter of weeks. And then, surprise!, they gained it all back. This drives me crazy. Crazy! Real change, real self improvement, is a long process. Nothing happens over night. Real change – whether the goal is losing weight or reading more or whatever – is hard and requires time, commitment, and a little self love.
I have goals, goals that I have thought about long and hard, and that I work very hard to reach. I’m not perfect, and sometimes I am more successful than others. January 1st was a week ago. And for the first time in a very long time, I did not make any resolutions. And damn it, it felt good.