Happy New You

Another year in the books.  If you consider January first the beginning of a new year.  I go with the flow, but I prefer the new year to begin at the beginning of the school year. Technically, I’m half finished with a new year.  It also depends on life’s circumstances.

When I was an expectant mom, the year began with the news, then it progressed into trimesters.  After each of my two kiddos were born, I broke up time–beginnings and endings–by month.  Now that I’m in grad school, it’s moving to semesters or sessions. Chunks of three, fall, spring, and summer (which used to be) break.

How is that resolution thing going?  I don’t like them.  They sound so…legal, official, unbreakable.  Even though we all break them before they start.  This year, I found a thread on a Facebook group about focusing on a one word resolution, you know, one of those character flaws we need to improve so we don’t overwhelm ourselves and fail before we start or figure out ways to cheat.  One word.  Really?  Who came up with that?  It’s a great idea though.  But one word.  For twelve months.  Aren’t we supposed to focus on small do-able goals so we keep it up throughout the year?

As I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with only one.  Happiness. As in choose to be happy every single day even when you want to retreat into a cave or take off on a one-woman road trip to see if anyone will look for you when you’ve been missing for a week. Patience.  Ah, patience.  Sounds really good, but a whole day, let alone the whole day, every day, for a year?  I decided I didn’t like her.  She doesn’t like me either, but my other word possibility, acceptance, is our mediator.

Acceptance, as in suck-it-up buttercup and put on your big girl panties because this is how it is.  Change it or move on, but don’t think about whining.  I tap into my inner toddler too often. And the inner toddler needs to calm down and breathe because her face is turning purple.  Which brings my next word, breathe, and it makes me want to cry because I can’t take the yoga class I took last year where I learned how to breathe again.  I breathed for a whole hour once a week and flitted out of the room only to come home to start suffocating on busyness all over again.  But that one hour a week was my retreat.

Only one word.  By the time I got to breathe, I became frustrated and deemed myself a failure because I couldn’t come up with one word.  That’s like asking a parent to name the favorite kid.  You just can’t.  I can’t. Other people happily posted their patient, accepting, breathable words.  I crossed my arms and my brain grunted and grimaced in its best two year old way while I told myself it didn’t matter because most people don’t keep their resolutions, but it bothered me.  Why can’t I come up with a word?

With so many areas to improve, how could this be so difficult?  I’m a lover of words, how could I possibly not have one?  After about a week something surfaced.  Three.  Out of all of the words in the English language, it’s three.  As in the trinity God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three because that’s the first place I need to focus.  But my relationship with God is like that of a teen with her parents.  They kick around trying to go against everything that’s good, decent, and right.

My three is so much more.  It means to focus on my husband, my thirteen year old boy, and my six year old girl. Spring semester, summer semester, and fall semester.  Mind, body, soul.  Wife, mom, daughter.  Triple Sec.  Menagè-á-Trois (the wine). Strawberry-basil mojitos. Happiness, patience, acceptance. Carbs, protein, fat.  Breathe…

How’s that resolution thing going, or did you decide on the one word?  Or, in my case, three.