The Obligatory New Year’s Post, or, I’m Too Old for Revolutions

A few year’s ago, I explained that we used to call them “New Year’s Revolutions.” This was supposed to indicate an intention to shake things up by changing something, irretrievably.

I’ve had quite enough shaking up the past few years. Just read my posts under the tag, “how not to” and you’ll get the idea. I’ll keep it simple, and more age appropriate this year, to wit:

A Sixty Year Old Widow’s Age-Appropriate Resolutions

1.  If it’s an available option, always choose sleep.
2. You really can’t eat that much anymore. So don’t. Embrace portion control.
3. Enjoy your invisibility, and protect it by keeping your opinions to yourself.
4. More reading, less TV.
5. Prepare, and begin to pursue, bucket list.

That’s it.

I went back and reread last year’s obligatory New Year’s post, and found that I either didn’t do what I said I would, or did, and backed off quickly. After floundering around for most of the year, I got a really great job. Now I’m focused on doing it well, and keeping it for as long as I can.

Figuring out how to keep up with writing while working full time is a challenge, but I’m determined to do it.  I think goals are different than resolutions, so:

A Sixty Year Old Widow’s Writing Goals for 2020

1. Finish querying first book.
2. Write next book.
3. Submit one piece of creative non-fiction or essay per week.
4. Tally rejections proudly – they mean you tried.
5. Find something to write about other than yourself.

Easier said than done.

OK, bucket list. Hmm. Don’t know if a bucket list should meet that organizational standard, “SMART” goals – specific, measurable (how do you measure the happiness you get from doing something you always wanted to do?) attainable, relevant, and time-bound (a bucket list is by definition time-bound – it’s a list of stuff you want to get done before you die). I don’t know if any of these are “SMART,” but here’s stuff I want to (or must) do before I die, in no particular order:

1. Downhill ski, again.  Apparently, ski equipment is so different since I last went, I’ll have to relearn skiing altogether. Or find some really old skis and boots on eBay.
2. Learn how to skate, and stop, on hockey skates. Just because.
3. Find the money to go and someone trustworthy to care for Angelic Daughter (and get Angelic Daughter set up with an acceptable, safe, happy independent living situation – that’s a must do) while I visit New Zealand, Australia (what’s left of it, after all the fires, so awful! thinking of you, Aussies!) Alaska and Ireland. Can’t think why I haven’t visited Ireland yet.
4. Get a book published. By a real, legit publisher. I want my obit to say, “Author of…”
5. Find a sane, non-pyschotic, non-gaslighting, non-mansplaining, binary, heterosexual he/him to love, who loves me back. If such a being exists. There’s always hope.

Recently, I’ve been behaving as if I have lost hope – eating too much, not working out- and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to give up on myself, my well-being and my chance, if there is any, to find love. I’ve been encouraged by my recent discovery that sleeping a full 8 hours a night takes ten years off my face. Who knew?

Today, I woke up feeling great. Yes, I woke up on New Year’s Day feeling wonderful. Probably because I spent the evening reading, and went to bed early, without watching on TV or participating in any of the forced gaiety of midnight celebrations and associated consumption of mass quantities of alcohol, a/k/a getting shitfaced (pissed, legless, paralytic, sloshed, plastered, wasted, etc. The English language has an extraordinary selection of words to identify the state of inebriation). Not that I didn’t raise a glass or three, but at least I had the sense to cut myself off and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

These past few years have given me, individually, and us, collectively, a lot of reasons to lose hope. But let’s just not. New year, new decade (yes, I’m on the “2020 starts the new decade, not 2021” team) and new chances to try to do the right thing, every new day we’re granted, every day we wake up, miraculously, again.

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade: may yours be filled with hope and mornings waking up feeling wonderful (and at my age, just waking up at all should count as feeling wonderful, even when my joints go snap, crackle, pop when I first get out of bed). I think of those sounds as the music of movement, and a reason to keep going.

Until next time, I remain,

Your tart-cherry juice drinking, ginger-turmeric tea swilling, arising gratefully, and absurdly early, to get to a great job on time,

Ridiculouswoman

Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay