Every year, as December 31st comes to a close, I want nothing more than to begin the next calendar with a clean slate and an organized life. Nothing brings me more dread than the idea of starting a new year with loose ends contaminating my fresh new calendar pages.
This year, as the clock struck midnight, I began 2008 with nothing that even remotely looked like this!! With my bad hair day, a body full of sick germs and a to-do list that was growing faster than I could keep up with it, my start to the new year was becoming a perfectionist’s worst nightmare! That’s why it was so important to take this past weekend and get through the remainder of my 2007 chores…so that, at the very least, I could begin the first full week of 2008 on the right foot.
Having this past weekend almost entirely commitment-free enabled me to catch up on most of the things that I couldn’t do while I was held prisoner by my holiday sickness. I cleaned my office and our apartment, I planned my last four weeks of training leading up to the Hypothermic Half-Marathon, we finished most of the planning for our trip to Australia (most importantly, I learned that there are thirteen Starbucks in the Sydney area!), we organized all of the important dates leading up to our move and I even had enough time to go for a big run and watch the Junior Hockey Team kick ass! It was just the forty-eight hours that I needed to get back on track! Except for one thing…I still hadn’t chosen my New Year’s Resolutions!!
One of my favourite things about the New Year is choosing resolutions but, I’ll admit, I usually fail hopelessly at them! I usually make some big, ambitious resolution that inevitably comes crumbling down around me come mid-February!! That’s okay though…what fun is a resolution if you can’t look back with a pitiful sigh of despair as you’ve watched it slip through your fingers again?!?!?
Anyways, I think that I’ve decided what mine will be for this year…
Do any of you have one of those people in your life whose world seems painfully perfect all the time?!?! I’m willing to guess that most women do and if you’re really lucky…it’s another woman that you don’t particularly like a whole lot (that’s where the “painfully” part comes in!!!). If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then allow me to summarize for you what this drug of choice is really like...
For some reason, everything about their life just seems to effortlessly fall into place all the time and you’re convinced that it’s done just in spite of you! For some of us (especially if their life is accessible on-line), their perfection almost becomes obsessive. Through the likes of Facebook, blog sites and MySpace, you are entitled to pick your poison as you end up constantly comparing yourself to their perfect life in their perfect house with their perfect jobs and perfect hair while they go on their perfect trips with their perfect budget, likely fine tuning all the perfect skills and perfect talents that you so happen to not possess! Cruel, isn’t it?!?!
All this to say that, I too, have fallen victim to this self-inflicted form of torture as well and my New Year’s resolution is to free myself from the bondage of comparison that I have subjected myself to. Almost unknowingly, I click on the link to her blog site and read her entries almost as a reminder of how inadequate my own life is in comparison. Like an addict, I then feel the on set of guilt for having “fallen off the wagon” yet again in a moment of weakness. Stupid, I know! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again…we’re all in recovery from something! Most of us have a tendency towards self-destructive behaviour of some kind…this, is mine! When I feel down and out, it’s always the shovel that throws the last pile of dirt that is determined to bury my self-esteem.
This year…I will no longer do this. This year, the girl that inflicted doubt and insecurity on me years ago, won’t make me feel small anymore. The perfectionist in me can do that enough all by herself!! This year, I will kindly remind myself (as many times as necessary) that we are all a work in progress and that most of all…things are never quite as they appear, especially through the eyes of overly-focused, cyberspace savvy women like me!
This year…will be different! At least until mid-February sometime!
This year, as the clock struck midnight, I began 2008 with nothing that even remotely looked like this!! With my bad hair day, a body full of sick germs and a to-do list that was growing faster than I could keep up with it, my start to the new year was becoming a perfectionist’s worst nightmare! That’s why it was so important to take this past weekend and get through the remainder of my 2007 chores…so that, at the very least, I could begin the first full week of 2008 on the right foot.
Having this past weekend almost entirely commitment-free enabled me to catch up on most of the things that I couldn’t do while I was held prisoner by my holiday sickness. I cleaned my office and our apartment, I planned my last four weeks of training leading up to the Hypothermic Half-Marathon, we finished most of the planning for our trip to Australia (most importantly, I learned that there are thirteen Starbucks in the Sydney area!), we organized all of the important dates leading up to our move and I even had enough time to go for a big run and watch the Junior Hockey Team kick ass! It was just the forty-eight hours that I needed to get back on track! Except for one thing…I still hadn’t chosen my New Year’s Resolutions!!
One of my favourite things about the New Year is choosing resolutions but, I’ll admit, I usually fail hopelessly at them! I usually make some big, ambitious resolution that inevitably comes crumbling down around me come mid-February!! That’s okay though…what fun is a resolution if you can’t look back with a pitiful sigh of despair as you’ve watched it slip through your fingers again?!?!?
Anyways, I think that I’ve decided what mine will be for this year…
Do any of you have one of those people in your life whose world seems painfully perfect all the time?!?! I’m willing to guess that most women do and if you’re really lucky…it’s another woman that you don’t particularly like a whole lot (that’s where the “painfully” part comes in!!!). If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then allow me to summarize for you what this drug of choice is really like...
For some reason, everything about their life just seems to effortlessly fall into place all the time and you’re convinced that it’s done just in spite of you! For some of us (especially if their life is accessible on-line), their perfection almost becomes obsessive. Through the likes of Facebook, blog sites and MySpace, you are entitled to pick your poison as you end up constantly comparing yourself to their perfect life in their perfect house with their perfect jobs and perfect hair while they go on their perfect trips with their perfect budget, likely fine tuning all the perfect skills and perfect talents that you so happen to not possess! Cruel, isn’t it?!?!
All this to say that, I too, have fallen victim to this self-inflicted form of torture as well and my New Year’s resolution is to free myself from the bondage of comparison that I have subjected myself to. Almost unknowingly, I click on the link to her blog site and read her entries almost as a reminder of how inadequate my own life is in comparison. Like an addict, I then feel the on set of guilt for having “fallen off the wagon” yet again in a moment of weakness. Stupid, I know! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again…we’re all in recovery from something! Most of us have a tendency towards self-destructive behaviour of some kind…this, is mine! When I feel down and out, it’s always the shovel that throws the last pile of dirt that is determined to bury my self-esteem.
This year…I will no longer do this. This year, the girl that inflicted doubt and insecurity on me years ago, won’t make me feel small anymore. The perfectionist in me can do that enough all by herself!! This year, I will kindly remind myself (as many times as necessary) that we are all a work in progress and that most of all…things are never quite as they appear, especially through the eyes of overly-focused, cyberspace savvy women like me!
This year…will be different! At least until mid-February sometime!
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