New Year's Blahs
I haven't seriously made any New Year's resolutions in a long time. I don't seem to have the tenacity to follow through with any of them, so I've learned that the best strategy is simply to bumble along with life. I see self-improvement as a fluid, lifelong process anyway.
Still, this year I've been taking stock of this stretch of my life and have come up with a list of things I'd like to do or do better. They are so breathtakingly pedestrian that I can't believe I'm sharing them: eat better; exercise (sadly, I can't even put "more" after that because were it not for chasing after the kids my muscles would be atrophying); be a more patient and creative parent; increase my charitable contributions; organize and pare down all the crap under which the foundations of our house will surely crumble…
We shall see. I've been feeling so melancholy lately that any effort toward improvement seems unrealistic. This bothers me quite a bit because there is no earthly reason for my feeling this way. Everything in my life bespeaks my incredibly good fortune.
Is it seasonal? I do hate winter, with its endless gray and chill. Or is it just that I'm whiny in general? Often, my response to my "woe is me " propensity is simply to read the newspaper. A quick glance at the headlines confirms that I have nothing, and I mean nothing, to legitimately complain about. These reality checks definitely curb my whining, but they also do little to propel me to action. I feel small and hopeless in the face of so much human suffering, and other than writing a check my tendency is to hide from it all. Which, of course, fuels my glum attitude.
I even feel guilty for writing this post because I think it indicates just how small-minded and provincial I am. I don't suppose that's a startling revelation to anyone who reads my blog, though.
There's no hope for any semblance of a conclusion to this post because Sean and Allie are now screaming at each other over who gets to play with the pillows on my bed. Best go tend to that escalating conflict, instead of say, reading about the conflict in the Congo.
I haven't seriously made any New Year's resolutions in a long time. I don't seem to have the tenacity to follow through with any of them, so I've learned that the best strategy is simply to bumble along with life. I see self-improvement as a fluid, lifelong process anyway.
Still, this year I've been taking stock of this stretch of my life and have come up with a list of things I'd like to do or do better. They are so breathtakingly pedestrian that I can't believe I'm sharing them: eat better; exercise (sadly, I can't even put "more" after that because were it not for chasing after the kids my muscles would be atrophying); be a more patient and creative parent; increase my charitable contributions; organize and pare down all the crap under which the foundations of our house will surely crumble…
We shall see. I've been feeling so melancholy lately that any effort toward improvement seems unrealistic. This bothers me quite a bit because there is no earthly reason for my feeling this way. Everything in my life bespeaks my incredibly good fortune.
Is it seasonal? I do hate winter, with its endless gray and chill. Or is it just that I'm whiny in general? Often, my response to my "woe is me " propensity is simply to read the newspaper. A quick glance at the headlines confirms that I have nothing, and I mean nothing, to legitimately complain about. These reality checks definitely curb my whining, but they also do little to propel me to action. I feel small and hopeless in the face of so much human suffering, and other than writing a check my tendency is to hide from it all. Which, of course, fuels my glum attitude.
I even feel guilty for writing this post because I think it indicates just how small-minded and provincial I am. I don't suppose that's a startling revelation to anyone who reads my blog, though.
There's no hope for any semblance of a conclusion to this post because Sean and Allie are now screaming at each other over who gets to play with the pillows on my bed. Best go tend to that escalating conflict, instead of say, reading about the conflict in the Congo.
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posted by Suzanne @ 9:45 AM
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