My daughter and husband have just joined me at the cabin and Kim brought her computer. I figure I have just enough time now to get in this one last topic: resolutions. I’ve been here three or four days – I don’t even remember! And my macbook decided to call it quits. Now I have a grey screen with a file folder and a question mark. I did some searching on my blackberry and found out my disc is dead, or perhaps just corrupted and can be fixed. Thank goodness it’s not my primary computer, so there is nothing there that I will miss if the data is non-recoverable. Or maybe there it – but since I don’t remember, it doesn’t much matter.
For many years I didn’t make resolutions. Then I read Jack Smith’s annual New Year’s Resolution. He’s a deceased columnist for the Los Angeles Times and boy, was he ever good. He said every year he’d make the same resolution: Try to stay alive and see what happens next. I love it – becasue the main reason I want to live a long, long time is to see what happens next, with my family, with the world, with technology.
Nonetheless, last year I did make resolutions. I wanted to develop a blog and a webpage but I knew it would remain one of those nebulous goals if I didn’t make a promise to myself. Also, I resolved to keep a journal every day. And you know what? Basically, it worked. I did develop trigger finger so I couldn’t write anymore (until after surgery and recovery) so I switched my journal to the computer, but I actually printed and pasted into the handwritten journal I had started.
After my blog was up, I wrote in that and not the journal. But now I realize that they do not serve the same purpose at all. So a resolution for this year is write in a journal every day.
Another resolution I made last year was to ratched down emotional reactions. Not that I’m not a reasonable person in my reactions to things, but I needed to get some space in some friendships, etc. I wish I could remember back to last January and how I worded this resolution to myself, but I can’t. I think I succeeded.
This was uncharted territory – actually succeeding at resolutions! Could it be that I’ve grown up? If so, why did it take me until I was 6 3? Dumb question because actually I know the answer. We have to continually strive for self-improvement throughout our lives. I mean, if we really made it to where we should be, I guess we’d all be Buddhas.
So this year. And I feel like I should hurry b/c up here in the mountains internet connections are capricious, and I want to get this posted.
2010
Continue my blog and web page for another year to see what develops.
Write in a personal journal every day.
Learn more about photoshop (this is scary b/c it’s SO technical
Learn more about my camera (this is a scary resolution because numbers are involved)
Read every night (hard to find time to read when blogging and photgraphing and doing art, but I need input in order to improve my output.
Read two or three other blogs each day to help the input situation and continue finding members of my tribe all over the world.
Get going with Flickr.
Keep producing in the art department.
Continue with Creative Every Day.
STAY POSITIVE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
This sounds like a lot but it’s not so much. So many of these goals are interrelated. The real hard part – the HARDEST part for me, is that I need to develop some discipline and a routine – but I’ve never been much of a routine person. Routines and I just don’t get along. So I’ll have to find a way to merge my tendency to run in all directions with sticking to some sort of routine.
To all of you out there, my friends and friends-to-be, and even those who will never visit this blog again and think I’m silly, I wish you ALL the best for 2010 with more highs than lows. We need some lows or there wouldn’t be highs, but may you all grow and learn and be satisfied. And I wish for everyone that we learn to accept ourselves unconditionally and let others be who they are.
