Don’t Give Up...Yet

If you’ve flaked on your new year’s resolutions, don’t give up just yet. Growing into yourself is not a pass/fail class. Getting a B- is still better than an incomplete. I, for one, resolved to post this post around the Lunar New Year when I'd resolved to write this blog, but...meh...it's up now.

What I've found through an informal survey of my girlfriends is that many of our metrics for success/failure are sabotaging us. One girlfriend resolved to "practice more" each week on her guitar skills. After two weeks, she'd given up on it, because she hadn't been able to fit it into her schedule "more." But what she really wants is to dazzle at house parties on the fly, so she re-resolved to memorize 5 popular party songs by year's end. If by June, she hasn't finished learning two songs, she'll know it's time to hustle to make it by next year. And even if she only learns 2, as her friend, I'll still be dazzled by those songs at house parties. Reframe your goals, so you can see how far you fell short but also how far you came.

Rather than declare "I will lose 10 pounds" and fail again this year, another friend decided she would train for the Susan G. Komen 3-day Breast Cancer Walk in October, often a life-changing experience with women survivors from all walks of life. She finds that measuring how much farther you can walk and what a difference you can make is much more relevant to real life than measuring how many Kate Mosses could fit in your pants. Re-examine your motives, because the thought really does count. Is your heart in the right place? If vanity was a solid motivator, don't you think we'd all lose weight every month after a new fashion magazine issue came out?

Last year, I resolved to get two poems published. I only accomplished my goal halfway, but it was still one more publication than I'd ever gotten in my career. Best. Failure. Ever. Making new year's resolutions in March is quite counterculture, if you're the type that turns on a band once they get popular, and if health or a charity run are your goals, the gyms aren't crowded anymore. Don't give up!

Procrastinating cuz I'm a wimp

Avoiding my computer to avoid writing the first original Shut Up and Love blog post hasn’t really been doing me any favors. I dreamt last night that the blogosphere (personified by a lurid, glass-eyed repairman cum child molester in an anonymous white van) was chasing after me, driving through buildings.

I procrastinated even starting this blog, because I dreaded having my failure-of-a-blog searchable on THE Internet - forever. I’ve done these evasive maneuvers before. I avoided any potential partner for damn near a year after a brutal breakup, because I was afraid my next failure-of-a-relationship would run me over. Obviously, I didn’t acknowledge my gun-shyness then. I pouted, “Why isn’t there anyone in the state of Georgia who will sleep with me?” Really, past self? Really, no one in this entire great state will sleep with you?

I was like the INS interviewer from Hell. [Are you emotionally available? Yes? APPLICATION DENIED! (end scene)] I would only allow myself to be attracted to men from out-of-state or married men or men with serious immigration status problems, and there were plenty. Seriously, I might have never run out of excuses not to fall in love again. Ultimately, I was tricked by a strapping foreigner who I thought would surely return to Germany when he finished his PhD – what a convenient exit strategy and how much fun we could have until then! Today, we’ve been together for 15 months, and I went to Frankfurt to meet his parents just this Christmas. I am disgustingly in love, and I’m really sorry for all the freakouts I had when I realized too late that you actually wanted a healthy relationship.