New Year's Thoughts

It didn't particularly start off well. We had people over for New Year's, but I was sick and fell asleep on the couch, and no one woke me up to watch the ball drop in Times Square or say "Happy New Year" at midnight. I was woken up a couple minutes after midnight. Umm, that kind of defeated the purpose of having a party and trying to stay up for it. That's two holidays in two weeks wrecked. It reinforces my idea to go far, far away next year for this entire week-long ordeal.

Anyway, it's that time of year. Reviewing my year's goals from the past year, and establishing new ones for the coming year. I don't do 'resolutions' per se, but I do like to look over where I've been in the past year, where I accomplished what I hoped, where I didn't and why, and what I hope to accomplish in the coming year. The astute may notice I've lost my ambition for particulars - with one exception, my list is short and vague this year.

Last year's recap.

Enjoy Life
While I didn't entirely fail at this, it didn't turn out as I hoped. There were far too many rough spots for my liking ... many of them not my fault (the unexpected death of my sister-in-law), but many of them were. Problems at home, problems at work - too many problems, everywhere.

There were a lot of good times and good things too. But I haven't done exactly what I set out to do - which was not to just enjoy some sporadic moments of fun, but to cultivate a foundation of peace and happiness that permeates my life every day, no matter what I'm doing.

That's why I changed this year's goal to "find inner peace" - that's all I really need. "Happiness" eludes description, but knowing I can be peaceful and content no matter what is going on around me would be a mindset worth cultivating.

Simplify Everything
This stayed, because I believe simplifying life goes hand in hand with finding inner peace. I believe wholeheartedly in the 'simplicity movement.' People accumulate too many things, both physical stuff, and mental baggage. This kind of accumulation doesn't foster a peaceful life.

Make One Knitted Garment That Actually Fits
Nope. Didn't finish the sweater. Not even close. Don't know if I ever will. I've been in a knitting slump for a very long time now, in part because of this inability to finish anything. I remember I went through this last year about this time as well, and started a project of trying to make one small thing a month, in addition to my large project - that way at least I got a sense of accomplishment. That only lasted a few months, and I'm not in the mood just now. So I didn't make any knitting goals for the year. I'll knit what I want, when I want, and if I don't, I won't.

Finish Tolkien Quilt
This became one of the purge projects. I started this thing in 1996 or 1997, but it had languished for so long. I'd work on it sporadically, then lose interest. I finally realized that I had long since completely lost interest in it, but kept trying to work on it out of some misguided sense of duty - and that's no way to feel about something that's supposed to be a relaxing hobby. I finally relegated this project to the "giving up" bin. And it feels quite liberating! I really don't care.

I did some nice applique work in the center panel, and I may choose to save that - maybe I'll make a nice wall hanging out of it or something. Otherwise, that project is but a memory.

Work On My CD
Well, I did one session, put down the guitar track for one song. That was it. Then I lost interest. In my goals of examining my life, I have to take a good look at this music thing, and decide what I want to do. If I really want to make a CD, then I need to buckle down and get busy working on it. And if I don't, it just seemed like a good idea at the time, then I need to forget about it and move on.

Take Another Great Vacation
We did that - our second trip to the beach house on the Outer Banks. It was a pretty good vacation - it had some frighteningly rocky spots, which I hope not to replicate if we go there again next year. And I had some issues with a travel-mate which I most assuredly don't wish to repeat next year. But all in all, it was a good trip. It's not a big enough deal, though, to add to the list for this year.

Complete House Fixing-Up
This didn't get accomplished at all, and is now completely up in the air. In the last month of 2008 I was convinced we were buying a new house and I quit worrying about this one. Now that it's all up in the air, I have to have a contingency plan. I cannot, cannot, will not continue to live in this place in this cluttered, messy condition if we can't buy the new house. Drastic steps are going to be taken. I just don't know what yet. That's why I changed the wording of this goal to "make my home liveable." That means if we move, grand - and I'll make that place nice. If we don't move, I will do whatever it takes - whatever - to make this place as comfortable and pleasantly liveable as I can.

Quit Smoking
Not yet, but this is another goal I have not given up on. I'm tired of ruining my body, and the one specific "resolution-type" goal I have for 2009 is to get healthier.

That's about it for last year. What are this year's changes?

Find Inner Peace
Gurus around the world for centuries have searched for this elusive thing. Such a simple sounding thing, but so complex. But that's all I really want in the coming year. Nothing else can really matter that much one way or the other if I can find that. Not sporadic 'happines,' enjoying some random events throughout the year, no one thing can take the place of just finding a foundation and a 'ground of being' in inner peace. I'm not sure how I'm going to cultivate such a thing in the arid soil of a mind in contstant turmoil and angst, but it'll be an interesting endeavor.

Simplify Everything
This goal remains, as I believe it is one of the requirements of the kind of life I want to live. Both physical - getting rid of the accumulated junk that is just taking up too physical much space in my life; and mental / emotional, getting rid of the accumulated junk that is sucking the peace out of my everyday life. Again, I'm not sure what I'm going to do, or how, but I do know that some things are going to change.

Make My Home Liveable
I think I talked about this already, and it goes with the above.

Quit Smoking And Get Healthy
I'm tired of wrecking my body, and I'm getting too old for this crap. I'm starting to enter that phase of life where all this bad living is going to start catching up to me, and I don't want to keep doing things that just hurry the process. I'm tired of feeling like crap all the time, tired, run-down, no energy, unable to go upstairs without getting out of breath, worried that I'm heading towards a heart attack (my dad's first was at the age of 48). Gotta stop this year.

Examine My Life
This is probably the most elusive and most important of all. Everything else revolves around this. I've read a lot about the alleged 'mid-life crisis' where people hit some age somewhere between 40 and 50-ish (it depends on the person) and start questioning all they've done, all they have, and what they want. Some people make fun of it, as if one is trying to grasp futilely at a lost youth. But two wise authors I've read say different (Barara Sher and Christiane Northrup). Both say, in their own ways (I'm of course paraphrasing), that there's a good and viable reason people start examining their lives in these years. For one, you finally first become truly aware of your own mortality. I don't care what anyone says, up until your late 30s, deep inside you mostly believe you are immortal. Death is something that happens to other people. Or it's so far away that you just don't even need to consider it as something that might happen someday. Of course people would say, "Of course I know I'm going to die some day." But there's some strange pocket in the mind that lets you just really, truly ignore it. It doesn't have any bearing on your day to day life. But you reach a certain age where it starts to crawl out of it's corner and make itself known on a pretty much regular basis. And you start to panic, maybe only a little at first - you think, "Rats, some day I actually am going to die, and do I want to die having done nothing but what I've done so far?"

It can be precipitated by things you see or experience. I know it didn't help me at all that I know - personally know - two people who died of cancer at the ages of 49 and 51. I know of several others. In our office, we've had more than one client die suddenly of a heart attack in their 40s. So when you see these things, some people of a more morbid mindset can't help thinking, "Hell's bells, that could happen to me." And it does make you start thinking about what you'd rather be doing with the rest of your life, other than what you are.

The second reason this happens is that often by the age of the 40s to 50s, people have pretty well gotten most of the little goals they had earlier in life - settled into their job of choice, have a nice house, a decent car, kids if they wanted them (who are probably growing up now and not requiring the constant care of the younger years), and they look around and think, "Well. This is it?" The pursuits of the 20s and 30s are found wanting when obtained. People look for something else, the something more.

Whatever. I've blathered on long enough defending my 'life examining.' The point is, I'm going to do it. I have a lot for someone my age in this forsaken, dead rust belt town. I have a "good" job (at least as far as hourly pay, benefits, and job security). I have my own home, which - well, we won't go there, you know that story. I'm in a good relationship. I have money in the bank so I don't have to live from paycheck to paycheck, don't have to worry about unexpected crises (an unexpected $600 truck repair this week didn't even bother me). I'm "middle class successful."

And I'm mostly not terribly happy or thrilled with my life, mostly just plodding through it day by day. So obviously there's something I'm missing. I'm either going to find out what it is, or recognize that this is as good as it gets, and I'm just a malcontent who needs to grow some gratitude.

We'll see.