New year, new book...

I have a tradition that every year on New Year's Eve I spend some time writing down the events of the year, good, bad, lessons learned, and goals accomplished. Then New Year's Day I write down the things I'm looking forward to. Not necessarily goals, as those could be too much like resolutions. Resolutions set one up for failure in my opinion. We all think that there's some magical formula that if we promise ourselves to drop  dress sizes by May that somehow we can make that work starting on the 1st. 

While I agree that it feels like we've opened a new book, I don't think it's realistic to expect drastic shifts every year. I've done that for the last few decades and no matter how determined I am, life has a way of reigning me in. Change is difficult whether it's my choice to change or the change is thrust upon me. 

  

This year my goals are much like those of previous years:  

• healthy living 
• get out of the house more 
• open myself to new friends and relationships 
• write more and finally finish that book proposal

Already, I have been experiencing discomfort, especially on the "relationships" portion of this list. Trusting and investing my emotions in other people is very hard for me. I tell others all the time that without pain there is no beauty, without suffering there is no joy, and without putting yourself out there in the world, you will not find love. My friend's words of, "Take your own damned advice," are bouncing around in my head, and I am positive this is a universal and absolute truth, but this does not make it easier, nor does it diminish any discomfort, assuage any pain or guilty feelings associated with this, and it doesn't even make it easier to figure out HOW to make this happen. 

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
- Khalil Gibran

I just know that I have to do it. I have no excuse. Well, I could come up with a few but really, they'd be lies, obfuscation, and misdirection.