Accidental Resolution

Sometimes I'm smug; this is Smaug.

I was feeling a big smug (albeit inadvertently) that I had made no New Year's resolutions this year; hadn't even considered that I might; had given the subject no thought whatsoever.  Then a couple of days ago I pulled myself up short.  Uh-oh, I thought.

There are two things. 

The first is that I make resolutions all the time.  I'm irritatingly unsatisfied, always looking for a way to improve, nit-picking very good things in an effort to make them even better.  And I do okay.  I mean, I annoy my husband sometimes when I apply this tendency to our relationship, but I generally think I have continued to move in the direction I want as a result of my own efforts. 

The second thing is that I spent most of the time between my son's birth in March, 2013 and this past fall in a state of panic, or at least high-alert.  I'm pretty good with panic (maybe being naturally anxious helps) - I'm good at focusing my energies, being decisive, getting sh*t done when it counts - but it's intense and it makes it hard to think sometimes.

In the fall, after completing the release of Gemma & The Bear, I found myself in a natural moment for a pause.  It was a chance to spend some time thinking about goals and create a road-map for reaching them.  (It is worth mentioning, as an aside, that meeting with my mentor was crucial to the success of this planning phase.)

Then, before I knew it: the holidays were upon us and with the kiddo out of school and our babysitter on vacation, it didn't make sense to do anything but hang out and be a mom.  The plan would be there for me in January and, in the meantime, we had a super non-stressful and really nice break.

This week, as I've been getting back to work and back to my plan, along with my desire to ACHIEVE (which is so real it needs all caps), I noticed this funny aversion to that intense, panicky energy I'd been working with/on for so long.  I realized I had plenty left to do in my plan and that getting myself worked up was entirely unnecessary to my getting those things done.  So this week, I've just been doing them (or trying to).  I've been trusting the plan and the process and feeling better about my days overall.  It's not that there's no stress, but there's no panic (yet) and I think I like it. 

I found myself resolving to try to keep this calm-but-productive, trust-the-process thing going as long as possible.  Smug no more.  We'll see how it goes.

How about you?  Did you surprise yourself with any resolutions this year?