New Year's Resolutions...Or Not

I am WAY overdue with my New Year's Resolutions, which I promised my friend Snowflake two months ago, and I don't have even the faintest trace of a good excuse. It's not that I don't have dreams or goals, specific things I want to achieve. It just seems that if I write it in a Resolution, and it does not come to pass, I am so disappointed in myself. It's too disheartening to make another round of promises to myself that never come to fruition - especially as the circumstances are so often beyond my control.

So instead, this year I will adopt a motto, a philosophy to challenge each new day, to seek possibilities and answers, come closer to fulfillment and further along the path to the ever elusive enlightenment we all hope to find.

I choose Thoreau because this particular verse is so apropos considering my state of mind these past two years.

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all of the marrow of life.
To put to rest all that was not life,
And not when I came to die,
Discover that I had not lived."

After my third dear daughter was born, I struggled for many months trying to readjust to the demands of a newborn, and she with her own particular challenges. I loved her, but somehow I felt that all my parenting had sucked me dry - left me spent and hollow. I could read here and there, and learned to bake yet another kind of cookie. But somehow in the midst of tummy time and "Baby Beluga" I lost myself.

I had no time for the things that brought me joy. Do not mistake me to mean that my children do not bring me joy. But there was a part of me before children that enjoyed so many other things, sought out knowledge and experience for personal growth. These were the things I longed for, my personal joy, time to just sit with a cup of tea and think or write in my journal.

My mind was swimming with the mundane, and I found myself floundering, struggling to stay afloat. I once told my husband that I felt I was walking a fine line to crazy, and I was dangerously close to slipping over the edge.

A time came when I simply relished the passing of time, to check off one more day, one more week, one more month...I let life slip through my fingers every day, unable to stop it and worse, not even caring any more - most days.

But there were moments of light, when I mourned for the "life" I was missing in the monotony. I wanted joy and peace in my life every day. I wanted to do the things I have always wanted to try and to learn, to fulfill my destiny and my dreams, so that I would not come to die only to "discover that I had not lived."

Soon the fear of never doing, only imagining, took hold, and I pulled myself up by my boot straps. I put my endless volunteering on hold and devote time each day to the things that make my life richer: reading, writing, exercise, music. I feel I am slowly returning to a self I have not seen in many, many long years. I WILL "live deliberately...live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."