D For Determination

One week into my little New Year's resolution action-plan to revitalize my life, and I've erased four marvelous months of progress. Just gave it away, like there was a never ending supply of changed behavior sitting in my closet somewhere, and all I had to do was go grab more. I feel silly, more than a little greedy, and altogether certain the only way I can regain my lost ground is to get back on the horse of determination. It's nuts, how quickly expecting measurable improvement knocked me on my ass. Allowing the tiniest seeds of discontent to blossom for just a second sent me into a full-on meltdown twenty minutes later. And then they just kept on coming. Before I knew it, everything was wrong, bad, awful or terrible. Like, everything. Clearly my grand plan to ignore any and all unhappiness, for fear of sinking into the miserable pit of despair, is the only state of mind I can exist in.

Perhaps I should think it's odd all this upheaval was accompanied by the familiar symptoms I spent the majority of 2013 plagued with. However, by now I only raise my eyebrow with mild interest at the ins and outs of this weird illness. A sore throat, aches, chills, and Shingles-type pain ripping through my face, are all strangely consistent with the end of the world doom-and-gloom mood I spent the majority of 2013 in, as well. I assume it's pretty obvious I didn't particularly care for 2013. At all. In my efforts to run screaming in the other direction to get as far away from last year as possible, I neglected to remember two key rules. 1. Be grateful for what is today. 2. Never expect perfection. Instead of remembering those two gems, I got mad that my life is my life. Once I got mad about the circumstances surrounding my mere existence, there wasn't a thing in the world that didn't piss me off.

The past is too big of a burden to bear. There is too much bad there, nothing in the world I can do will ever make it good. I could spend the better part of the rest of my life trying to clean up the past, and it would never fix the injustice, sacrifice and misery floating around back there. Part of choosing to change my behavior and move forward was to recognize I am simply not strong enough to right so many wrongs. And even if I were, is that honestly the best use of my efforts? The past is dead, over, inflexible and concrete. If it hasn't already happened in the past, it's surely not going to at this late date! But the future, now that's something different. Fluid and full of promise, hope, inspiration or even dreams, the future is still to be determined. It's a wonderful place where the hard work of today pays off, interpretation is nine-tenths of reality, and without a doubt where life actually happens.

Thanks for joining,

Leah