Resolution? Less TNT mornings

I've never had new years' resolutions. But during the year a few smooshy goals sort of emerge, and I just gently push myself in those directions. Seems to work just fine!

This past year it was learning to meditate. ...And without Setting Out to Do It, I also learned to drink water, and eat apples.

My sort of mantra was: Do the thing you think you cannot do (Eleanor Roosevelt). Sometimes I succeeded (starting to write again) sometimes I failed (Nanowrimo). And I don't mind that word "failed." It's okay to fail. Everyone does at some point(s). I faced up to my fears--in baby kitty steps--and that's what matters.

My companion in this was Ms Brownlow, who has a lot of obstacles in her life, but all the same tried every day to do her little thing. She bravely chipped away at the Things She Thought She Could Not Do, and each of those tasks is now smaller than it was one year ago. So congrats to Ms. Brownlow, you were very inspirational!
   
The only goal to naturally emerge so far this year is to get to bed earlier when I have work the next day. I just hate HATE those first ten minutes of waking up and feeling like I want to light up a stick of dynamite and blow my pajama-ed self to smithereens.

But more than that, I'm motivated by the deleterious cumulative effect. Maybe I'll write about that another time.

Best of luck to all of you, in whatever purposeful or accidental or incidental challenges you take on this year. I know you'll all shine like stars. :-)

This calls for a song! One of my 2012 faves: "Do It Now" by Ingrid Michaelson

Don't waste a minute on
The darkness and the pity sitting in your mind
And do it right now

We're doing The Things We Cannot Do

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' ... You must do the thing you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living

I was recently reminded of that line in one of Oprah's Life Class episodes: You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

I saw the episode when I was catsitting for Swiss Girl. The next day I knew I had to open my damned computer and edit my novella, and I stood there in the kitchen looking towards the living room, and I felt like: I can't. I don't even know why I felt this way. I knew that if I just started I'd be fine, but starting felt like this huge task. And then I remembered the line. I said to myself: Mabel, you must do The Thing You Cannot Do. And I marched myself over to the couch and worked on my novella.

I shared this with Ms. Brownlow. It's become our mantra. She's had some much more difficult things to do than opening a Scrivener file, and she kept telling herself: Time to do The Thing I Cannot Do. She muscled through. She kicked a. and took n.

Yesterday and today I made my bloggy nabe rounds, and saw a lot of Facing the Thing That Cannot Be Done. One frog (Friend on a Blog!) has just learned that her brother's cancer is back, aggressively so. Everyday things suddenly became Things That Cannot Be Done. But she did them.

So... just wishing you all luck with your Thing That Cannot Be Done, whether it's getting out of bed tomorrow morning, making that phone call, leaving that dude, walking the dog, quitting your job. May the Force be with you.

"We'll never get it out now!" (Too much left brain, Luke. Too much left brain.)