Resolution

Rambling on.

I don’t want a typical resolution this year. I don’t want something like everyone else’s – full of always and never terms. I’m making a resolution, yes, but it’s not specific.

 

Look, if making specific “I will always do this” or “I will never do that” resolutions works for you, then awesome! Knock yourself out. But they don’t work for me. Saying that I’m going to go to the gym X amount of times a week or that I’m going to quit eating anything with Y+ calories or that I’m going to change my personality completely doesn’t work for me. I tried. Heck, last year I made a freaking list of about a billion things I was going to do to change my life (or at least my year).  How many did I keep? One. (I stopped drinking pop, if you want to know.) That’s not including all the other resolutions I’ve broken in past years.

 

Yes, I want to go to the gym more, but I don’t want to force myself into it by saying “I will go on this day every week” or something. I feel better when I go, so I should be able to go without having to motivate myself in that way. Fast food makes my body angry, so I should be able to go without eating it without having to swear off it forever. Putting on a real smile by being with friends or doing something I love makes happiness pour out, so I should be able to make myself happy without forcing myself to ignore my problems. Writing makes me feel connected, not only to myself, but to new ideas, the world, and the people around me, so I should be able to have the desire to put pen to paper without making myself sit down every night to write something that I don’t really want to.

 

I suppose I just don’t want an “always” or “never” resolution. The words “will” and “won’t” don’t belong in a statement unless they can be changed to fit the situation. Black-and-white ideas don’t hold true in the colorful world, and so black-and-white resolutions won’t hold fast either. I want a grey resolution – I want something that I can actually keep in 2009 instead of half-heartedly pursuing in January and then forgetting by March. Resolutions are supposed to make you feel better, not make you feel like you are forcing yourself to do something (that’s not to say they are supposed to be easy; it is a change in lifestyle, but it’s supposed to be something you are willing and able to follow through with).

 

So, my resolution is this: I am going to do what I know will make me feel good. That means going to the gym more, cutting back on the fast food, hanging out with friends constantly, and writing a lot more often, but it also means that if I want to skip the gym to go eat some Taco Bell by myself and not think about compositions at all, I can do that without feeling like I’m breaking a promise to myself.