CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

All things being relative, it is just another day. The sun came up, coffee was made, and here I sit, just like any other day, in front of the laptop, letting the verbiage flow like water.

But, it is a new year on the calendar. 2008. The ball dropped in Times Square. A signal. An opportunity to start afresh. An opportunity to mentally let the crap of the past stay in the past, so be it.

I’m not a resolution grrl. I don’t believe in making promises, even to myself, that will probably be broken. Change doesn’t happen from a bunch of sentences scribbled in a journal, or printed on a blog, instantaneously just because I wrote it down. Change happens gracefully and slowly over time, usually unnoticed until something makes me think when did my thinking/reacting/opinion change? hmmm …

I like making promises about things that can actually happen. Things that, with the right thinking can actually manifest over the time in a year. My friend actually beat me to the post, similar to the one that I had intended to write this morning (but maybe that’s because she lives in a different time zone and is nine hours ahead of me). The intent is just to appreciate myself for who and what I am today, and let myself be for awhile. Let the world work on me a bit, rather than me work on myself.

So, for the New Year, I hope that everyone is either becoming the person they want to be, or just sitting back and letting the happiness in who they already are roll around the Universe.

I found this over on 3:40am, a blog I enjoy checking in on from time to time because he is just so matter-of-fact about his observations and the things that go on in his life.

1) Where did you begin 2007?
I began 2007 at a housesit in Mill Valley, with very scarey 75 mph winds blowing down the hill through the redwood trees over the house. Have you ever seen a redwood tree bend in the wind? Then went back to the house in Berkeley soon after the New Year.

2) What was your status by Valentine’s Day?
Single. Unemployed, or Self-employed, depending on your perspective.

3) Were you in school (anytime this year)?
No.

4) How did you earn your money?
I didn’t earn very much. House and pet sitting mostly, some freelance web development, google AdSense.

5) Did you have to go to the hospital?
Yes, for the first time since I was nine years old. Emergency gall bladder surgery.

6) Did you have any encounters with the police?
Not that I remember. I almost hit a few Berkeley parking traffic control ticket writing people out of anger though.

7) Where did you go on holidays?
No holidays (vacations) this year. I watched everyone’s homes while they went away. So I was in San Francisco, Mill Valley, and Berkeley.

8) What did you purchase that was over $1000?
Not one thing.

9) Did you know anybody who got married?
No.

10) Did you know anybody who passed away?
Yes. The patriarch of my Family B. (My genetic family is Family A. Family B is the family of my once best friend.) He was a really good friend who shared his home with me on holidays for twenty years.

12) Did you move anywhere?
I move every few days and weeks over the four summer months (May – September). It gets really tiring.

14) What concerts/shows did you go to?
I saw a play at the Berkeley Rep – After the Quake. It gave me inspiration to write a novel, but also by comparison made me realize I shouldn’t try to write fiction.

15) Are you registered to vote?
I have to check on that.

16) Who did you want to win American Idol?
I’ve never seen American Idol.

17) Where do you live now?
Out of my car at a client’s house in Berkeley.

18) Describe your birthday.
I always have high hopes for my birthday, but I usually end up being alone. This year was my fiftieth, so I popped open a bottle of Champagne that I had bought in France a few years before and watched TV.

19) What’s one thing you thought you’d never do but did in 2007?
I never ever thought I would be in the hospital, especially with emergency surgery. I thought I would resign to die first. Funny how my mind changed once I was confronted with the possibility.

20) What has been your favorite moment?
Waking up each morning and seeing the dog watching me sleep.

21) What’s something you learned about yourself?
I can finally write numerous grant applications and sound like a grounded, well-deserving individual.

22) Any new additions to your family?
Not that I know of, although I’m usually the last to know.

23.) What was your best month?
They were all pretty much the same, except for December. December was definitely not my best month. But there is still a week and two holidays left, so maybe I shouldn’t rush to judgment.

24.) What song will remind you of 2007?
I don’t think of songs and years as going together. Music is more fluid than that.

25.) Looking forward to a New Year?
Absolutely! My horoscope says I’ll be traveling a lot which I really need to do and I always look forward to.

Tag You’re It: Anyone who reads this (post and link back on your own blog or in the comments area).

I’ve been thinking about traditional New Year’s Resolutions for a couple of days now. I suppose I should stop thinking about them because the tradition is to make them on New Year’s Day. And it’s already the third.

In my life I have made many New Year’s Resolutions, usually based on what I thought a good resolution should be – this year (whatever year it was) I will lose weight, be nice, go to church, stop eating junk food, find a nice boyfriend … all things that the people around me wanted me to do and all things that I ultimately failed at. I pretty much stopped doing this after I moved twenty-five hundred miles away from my family. My resolutions fell by the wayside.

Two years ago I decided to do something new. On New Year’s Day of that year I took a personal vow to live that year as the last year of my life. To truly contemplate what I would like my last year on the planet in this form to be. To contemplate my death and know that I lived life to its fullest. To go out at the end of the year with no regrets, no attachments. I made a conscious decision to not do things that were against my nature. I looked at this as a project and went into it thinking that I should live my life consciously without social restrictions and that I should use only my own spirit as a guide.

That year was one of the two happiest years of my life. It wasn’t without its ups and downs and all-arounds. But everything that I did, no matter how small was something that I consciously chose to do. Every action came with the question of how it fit into my big scheme, how would I feel when I looked back on it at the end of the year.

It was probably my first successful New Year’s Resolution.

Main Entry: res·o·lu·tion
Pronunciation: "re-z&-'lü-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English resolucioun, from Anglo-French or Latin; Anglo-French resolucion, from Latin resolution-, resolutio, from resolvere
1 : the act or process of resolving : as a : the act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones b : the act of answering : SOLVING c : the act of determining d : the passing of a voice part from a dissonant to a consonant tone or the progression of a chord from dissonance to consonance e : the separating of a chemical compound or mixture into its constituents f (1) : the division of a prosodic element into its component parts (2) : the substitution in Greek or Latin prosody of two short syllables for a long syllable g : the analysis of a vector into two or more vectors of which it is the sum
2 : the subsidence of a pathological state (as inflammation)
3 a : something that is resolved resolution to mend my ways> b : firmness of resolve
4 : a formal expression of opinion, will, or intent voted by an official body or assembled group
5 : the point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out
6 a : the process or capability of making distinguishable the individual parts of an object, closely adjacent optical images, or sources of light b : a measure of the sharpness of an image or of the fineness with which a device (as a video display, printer, or scanner) can produce or record such an image usually expressed as the total number or density of pixels in the image resolution of 1200 dots per inch>
synonym see COURAGE

Definition from Merriam-Webster (I particularly like numbers two and six, but all of these definitions taken individually and without relationship to each other seem to expand the definition of what we think of when we say ‘New Year’s Resolution)