New Year Aspirations?

From time to time I have done the 'resolutions' thing, usually with limited success. I find they are generally either too specific  - so even one 'failure' essentially negates the whole thing and causes me to give up - or too general, so that it's hard to see any progress or change, and I tend to forget about them.

So I wasn't going to bother this year.

But I couldn't get over the nagging feelings that - as always - it would be good to be a bit healthier, to spend less time on Facebook, to get back to writing (something I tend to do in fits and starts) and to work on my long-neglected websites. I also felt quite frustrated that in the whole of 2013 I only managed to read 72 books. In 2012 I managed 90, and thought that bad enough. In previous years I aimed for more than 100. So, I thought, I would aim to read more in 2014.

Then I had the idea of 14 different general things to aim for in 2014.

But not resolutions. I wanted another word. The obvious one is 'intentions', but the road to hell is supposedly paved with good ones, and I certainly didn't plan on bad ones. 'Aspirations' is the best I could come up with.

Yes, they're fairly general. That leaves plenty of room for interpretation and flexibility. And no, I'm not going to list them. This is more of a meta-post about why a new year seems so significant to so many people. We're now five days into 2014, and I've already finished reading two books (though admittedly both were started in the last week of 2013, and neither was long). I've even worked for a few hours on one of my websites, and done about 6000 words of writing. I'm trying to get through my 'to-do' list each day rather than continually procrastinating, and so far have mostly succeeded.

For five days.

I'm told it takes about 30 days to develop new habits, so January is as good at time as any to come up with new habits - whether exercising, or eating differently, or writing, or whatever it happens to be. Five days is a sixth of that. Can I continue until the end of the month? I hope so.

Which doesn't begin to answer the question of 'Why January?'

Advent Sunday is officially the start of the Church's new year, but - at least for me - it would be a very difficult time to start a new habit, or come up with anything other than a focus on Christmas. Even keeping it very low-key, mostly organised before December, I was aware of the build-up, the anticipation, the things to do so that I could take a few days to relax and try to remember Jesus, born in poverty, for our sake.

Lent is another time for new beginnings, although it's usually thought of as a time to give up bad habits temporarily. Lent has forty days, so theoretically a new 'good' habit could be formed in that time, but for many people, as is traditional, the end of Lent signifies a return to indulgence and excess.

September is the new 'academic year', at least in most of Europe and North America. I remember having good intentions at the start of each school year, determined to study more, to take my education more seriously. I usually gave up by about the end of the first week. I like Septm

The Chinese new year will be celebrated at the end of January. I suppose February could be a good time for a new set of new 'resolutions' for those who fell at the first post on January 1st.

And that brings us back to this time of year, when so many people resolve, 'this year will be better'. Perhaps it's just the tidiness of starting a new calendar. Or the hopeful feeling that comes as the days start getting longer after the winter solstice. Or maybe it's just tradition...

So, I will probably continue having new ideas, hopes, intentions, yes, even resolutions at the start of each new year.

But as I've grown older, I've become more aware that  - in a sense - it doesn't actually matter if I don't keep them. God loves me anyway. He loves me even more than my closest friends and relatives do. A whole order more, in fact. He runs out to meet me when I turn to him, and he forgives my greatest sins and failings.

He has done all that already... so while I know that it's good to follow his leading, and spend my days constructively, and look after my health, these and other 'good intentions' are indeed a potential path away from God if I see them as anything more than useful ideas, from which I can deviate if God has something more important.

And even if I fail in every one of my hopes for 2014, even if I am unhealthier, lazier and even less productive a year from now, God still loves me anyway.

***

The irony is that, free to be fully myself, free in the knowledge that I am not bound by any laws or traditions or requirements, I am actually a whole lot more likely to follow God's leadings and promptings. 

Sue F

Life stages and patterns

This has been something of a year of milestones, as I shall no doubt mention when we write our annual Christmas newsletter at some point in the next few weeks. I celebrated my 50th birthday. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. In between those two events, our older son became engaged, planning to be married next year.

Thirty years. It feels like a lifetime, but then I still feel about 26 on the inside. How can I possibly have been married that many years? How can my sons, who were children for such a short time, now be young men with their own lives, separate from ours ? And most of all, how can I be fifty years old?

I'm not particularly worried about advancing chronology. I'm not embarrassed about my age, or the lines on my face, or the grey hairs slowly creeping in. I don't hide any of them - I don't see the point in pretending to be younger than I am. I am still in good health, for which I am thankful. And as I sit here in my jeans and a tee-shirt, I can't quite reconcile it with the way that people in their fifties seemed so elderly when I was in my teens. Even when I was in my twenties. I vaguely assumed that one day I'd start wanting to wear tweedy skirts and tights ('panty-hose' in the USA), and court shoes. But I, and other people my age, still dress the way we did when we were 20. Perhaps younger people see us as old-fashioned in our styles, but I like to be comfortable.

The scary thing about being 50 is that, most likely, I am now more than half-way through my life. At 45, I could say cheerfully that I was half-way to ninety. My grandmother started to seem old when she passed 90; that seemed about right to me. I'm from a fairly long-lived family, on the whole. Barring accidents, I probably have a good chance of living into my nineties. But very few people make it to 100. Would I even want to? I don't know. My grandmother didn't.

Of course, it feels like a very long time since my childhood. Another 50 years - even another 40 years while I still feel energetic - is also a long time. I feel the years spreading out around me; my schooldays passed, my early married life gone by; the children, born, grown, and moved out. Our 'nest' became empty nearly two-and-a-half years ago and I found it very upsetting at first. But we've grown accustomed to it; we welcome our sons home when they come to stay, but it's not likely that either of them will live here again. So the future seems calmer, more settled. Unlike many people my age, I have no hankering to take university courses, or study further. Living abroad, there's no real chance of getting a job, even if I were looking for one. I like to look after the house, and cook, and spend time with friends, and write emails and blogs, and run my websites.

Still, my main question remains: what will I, primarily, do for the next forty or so years?

The subsidiary question is: do I need to know? Or do I continue living one day at a time, doing what needs to be done today, and letting tomorrow take care of itself? It sounds like a Biblical way of living; the problems are (1) I don't necessarily know what needs to be done today (2) even if I do, I don't necessarily do it (3) If I'm to do something significant, such as write a book, or build a new website, I need to have the ideas, and spend many months working on them.

I'm not unhappy. I'm basically a contented person, thankful that there is no urgent need for me to find paid employment. But I do sometimes wonder what the pattern of the future will hold.

Procrastination. Big time.

I am a little startled to see that I have not updated this blog for almost two years. I've certainly thought about it, from time to time. I have updated my other blogs, periodically; I certainly haven't lost the random abstractions that swirl around my mind. But somehow, catching them and squashing them flat so that they can be put in words isn't always easy.

At least, that's my excuse. Procrastination is part of my nature; something I've had to learn to accept, and work through. I read an excellent book recently, 'Writing on Both Sides of the Brain', which inspired and enthused me more than any of the many other books I have read (and am still reading) about writing. It encouraged me to work out what I gain from procrastination, and to work through it. It gave exercises to enhance my creativity while quietening the internal critic/judge/editor, at least in the initial stage of writing. It gave techniques to help me tap into my creative side, and actually get some writing done....

... and within a couple of days of finishing the book, I'd forgotten most of them. Writing first thing in the morning before coffee was one of them. Before coffee?? I can barely hold a pen at all, let alone write before my first caffeine of the day. But yes, writing almost first thing can be energising and inspiring. As can just writing randomly rather than sitting staring at the paper. Or computer. But as soon as I'd put the book back on a shelf, and reviewed it, my enthusiasm waned away.

November is a month for writing. NaNoWriMo encourages people to write novels, 2000 words per day over the thirty days of the month. I tried it a few years ago, and got about a third of the way through. I thought about it this year, but am quite out of inspiration. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating still further. Those who can't quite bring themselves to writing a novel can, instead, join NaBloPoMo - the idea being to post every day on a blog. I've done that before on my Cyprus blog. I'm wondering if I can do it on my book reviews blog, which would, of course, also mean finishing reading one book every day in November - something that definitely sounds a good plan, although I would have to cheat slightly and read more children's books than normal.

And maybe, just maybe, I could start writing posts on this blog again too.