My only New Year’s Resolution

It’s this time of year again with all the hope of a better year than the one before… again, and all the new year resolutions… again, and all the online articles and blog posts about how you did it wrong last year with the new year’s resolution but this year, it’s a winner, baby… again!
Most common resolutions I’ve seen (and made):

1. Lose weight
2. Be healthy
3. Be happy
4. Find a better job
5. Be happy, dammit!
6. Follow your dreams
7. Find your passion
8. Study more
9. Work more
10. Get married (yes I’ve seen it, and I sort of get it when a couple has been together for a couple of years and it just doesn’t get done!)
11. Leave your spouse (seen it too, not an easy choice)
12. Become more spiritual.
13. Meditate.

My own personal favorites, that happen to be mine and very few other people’s:

1. Write more (2014 was an all-time low for blogging at 9 posts –this makes 10 –and 4000 views) so I showed ’em!
2. Study more.
3. Become a better daughter/sister/aunt/sister-in-law/niece/etc.
4. Do something daring.
5. Learn to cycle.
6. Learn the cello.
7. Write a novel (that’s my favorite, I always kill all the characters in chapter 1) J
8. Finish that story I got in a folder I call “old old old laptop” which just means it’s something I’ve had for a long time.
9. Finish that other story in the folder called “stories” which has a few more other stories right next to it.
10. Face my fears, again!
11. Get in touch with my long lost friends.
12. Drop all the sucky friends.

And because I’ve had so many resolutions for so long that are hardly ever achieved by plan, and usually by accident, I’ve decided to wade into the new year of 2015 unprepared, unplanned, un-disappointed, un-hopeful, with both feet firm on the ground… or not, who knows right?
Here’s what I know about 2015:

1. Absolutely nothing!

I also know that I need to lose weight, write more, finish my stories, write a novel, learn to cycle, face my fears (and all those fears I never realized I had until life decided to throw a curve ball). Therefore, with no resolutions, and with the help historical data and objective self observations, I’ve decided to do one thing in 2015, and that is…
Drumroll please…

Follow Through

And to give myself a helpful hint:

Don’t bite off more than I can chew

So even if I decide to do nothing, and follow through, then I’ve done something. But, if I decide to become NASA’s next top rocket scientist, I’m following through on that too because it doesn’t really matter how terrible our lives are now, or even how wonderful. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t written a story this year, or haven’t learned to play the cello, or even if I gained another scary 10 kg. What matters is that I write 1 and only one story, if that’s what it means to not have a dozen incomplete stories in my old old old laptop folder and say at the end of the year that I want to finish it on the next.
Bridget Jones's New Year Resolutions

The Year I Was Too Busy to Live

It’s time for my yearly blog on the not so happy occasion of getting a year older and a year closer to the infamous 30. (P.S. my birthday was actually 6 days ago, that’s how busy I am)

I’ll keep this short. I haven’t really learned anything this year. I’ve been too busy working, and too busy studying, and too busy thinking about all the problems I face during working and studying to actually work effectively or study well. It’s like I’ve choked myself by being busy; biting more than I can chew and still trying to bite a little more. Sounds disgusting and gluttonous, except it really isn’t, at least not in that sense.

During this fine year, I was too busy to keep up with my friends, and I was too busy to do anything fun. I was so busy even that I think I sent the guy I liked hidden messages telling him I’m too busy for him, which sort of sucks, but anyway.

New year, new life. MBA should be over by the end of the month and I will actually be free! Of course, I try to pretend that the MBA is what’s ruining my life and keeping me busy except I know it’s not. I try to say that working too hard is ruining my life, which it is, but it’s not like the world would end if I work too hard or too little. I’m another cog in a horrible machine. Once ruined by burnout, I would be replaced… not much point in that either.

I wish I could say I learned something, even without the constant reflection that takes me around in circles into my brain and back to that same starting point. I learned book stuff in the MBA. That was an addition. I learned that politics is everywhere no matter where or what you do for a living. I learned that nice people are usually weird but there are still nice people around. I keep losing my faith in humanity and getting it back again, but in the end humanity is what it is; flawed, and the world is an ugly place despite our constant attempts at being appalled by its ugliness without doing anything about it. Well, maybe I haven’t really learned that but a reminder is always nice.

So what’s my new year’s resolution based on my not so deep learnings? That’s actually the worst part about the new year. I won’t have the MBA excuse anymore, I have to think about all those things that I should do or else life is futile. I have to dodge all the marriage nagging from practically everyone (it really isn’t that I’m against it, there is just a horrible lack of adequate AND interested supply). I need to finally figure things out, which is what I’ve been trying to do for the past God knows how many years and never reaching an answer. I’ll probably come up with more big ideas that are like hot air balloons. At the end of the day, I am still me, my birthday is just another day when I get older, like all other days when one gets older (it’s called time passing), but this year, I haven’t grown wiser, just more used to life with all its downs and ups and downs that are actually ups.

Happy Birthday to me!