The UNresolution

Happy New Year!

I hope you rang in the New Year in whatever way you wanted -- whether at a large party or a small gathering, out on the town or in bed before midnight.  And I hope 2014 is wonderful for you. The launch of The Opposite of Normal is next month so I'm hoping 2014 will be a good year for me.

With the New Year always comes the discussion of resolutions.  People discuss their resolutions on tv., on Facebook, on Twitter, and everywhere else.

I think New Years' resolutions can be good -- a friend told me her New Year's resolution last year was to stop smoking -- and she did.  But generally speaking, I feel like New Years' resolutions are about resolving to do or be something we're just not -- and ultimately, we wind up feeling worse about ourselves when we're unable to keep the resolution.

A lot of resolutions seem to be about losing weight.  Now, if you're losing weight to save your health -- if you're morbidly obese, if you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, whatever -- trying to lose weight makes sense. But if you're ten pounds over what you'd like to be and have tried a million times to lose it and just can't, and you're otherwise healthy -- why not try to accept that you're not as young as you used to be, or that you're a really good person with the fatal flaw of eating cake a little too much -- and just not make that resolution, which come a month or two or three down the road is going to just make you feel bad?

What about being a procrastinator? It's one thing if you procrastinate to the point that you always miss your work or school deadlines. Yeah, you have to get a handle on that. But do you do your holiday shopping the day before the holiday? So what? Do you wait to clean your house until your guests are practically on your doorstep? That's not really such a bad thing. And it's probably inborn, so if you're doing it, trying not to do it may just make you feel awful about yourself -- for no reason.

I could resolve to do a lot of things.  I could keep my house cleaner, I could try not to be so cheap with my money, I could promise myself I would not watch so much mindless tv.  But these things are part of me. They don't hurt anyone else. So instead of resolving to change these bad habits, I'm going to resolve not be so hard on myself. To accept myself as I am. Who's going to join me?