Happy 2014!

It’s the New Year!  In some respects, it’s really hard to believe it’s 2014!  I still remember all the fears when the calendars were going to change to the year 2000!  Big frets and worries that all the computer systems were going to stop working, etc.!!!

I just read somewhere that since January 2nd is the actually 12th day of the yuletide celebration, it is the actual day for resolutions!  Who doesn’t think about resolutions at New Year’s.  It’s natural I guess.

This year I feel so differently, it’s hard to explain.  I don’t feel such immense relief that 2013 is over as I have felt on so many New Years Eves.  I don’t feel compelled to make strong and new and different resolutions.

Don’t get me wrong, I still need to lose a lot of weight, to eat healthier, be more physically active, save more money, etc.  But I have something I missed for a long time in the earlier years of this millennium at least….contentment!  2014 doesn’t need to be a lot different from 2013 for it to be wonderful!  I am so grateful for that feeling.

That being said, I hope to continue to work on living in the moment.  It sounds so “Oprah”, and it’s harder to do than you think.  The minute you’re yelling at the guy in the car in front of you to GO ALREADY cuz you’re in a hurry, or sit and worry over something or someone, you’re outside of the “living moment”, and an experience you could really be participating with and enjoying.  That’s when I know that I’m not getting the good out of what’s going on around me!  I have a lot of work to do to be successful at it, but even the “trying”  had brought me so much peace and joy.

In 2013 my oldest sister turned 60.  It was a big deal to us kids because my dad died unexpected of a massive heart attach at 59 only a few months before his 60th birthday.  It was a milestone that the first of us kids “beat”.  It’s a weird feeling and knowing my sisters and brother felt the same as I did about it was a moment of clear understanding for me with my sibling.  We are “orphans” now with both our parents gone, mom at age 70 (less than 2 months after her birthday) and dad at 59.  While most of our friends are now dealing with aging parent issues, we lost them both so young.  As as we “age in”, the reality of our mortality is ever looming.

But then yesterday, via ancestry.com (even though I guess some of my sisters already knew), I found out that my dad’s mother, Grandma Nina Schwartz, died at age 53….so, in another way of looking at it, almost all of us kids (the youngest two aren’t quite there yet!) have “beat” that age!  It’s no grand realization that I’m in the worst physical shape of all 6 of us kids; and that, in turn, could lead to me being the first to die.  I can’t totally get a handle on the weight and fitness…but I’m not discouraged.  I’ve made the best strides this last year or two EVER with it and I intend to continue trying to move forward with it.  Old habits die hard and my misuse of food as “love” or whatever else I use it for, is not hard to dispose of.   So my hope for 2014, is that I continue forward strides, and that I show health and wellness progress for the effort.   And I hope the years of self-sabotage and loathing are over and that there hasn’t been irreparable damage.  These are the demons that plague me.  And writing them here, well maybe they’ll lose their power and I can shine my way right through them!

That little paragraph is a “blip” compared to the luck and fortune and joy and happiness my life is filled with.  That paragraph, those little demons are the scale balancers I guess.  We all have them.  The sacrifices or compromises we make to try to keep our lives in balance.  Thank good for the “right” balancers!  First and foremost MY SONS, and all My family; my friends; my coworkers; my professors; my pets!   It takes off of them to not allow the icky’s to take their hold.  But living more openly, not feeling the need to hide and/or cover for personal miseries and indignities imposed upon me has given me such a freedom.  I’m forever grateful for my therapist Miriam, who passed away a little over a year go now, for her succinct statement to me that I was no longer someone’s secret keeper.  She remains alive in me with her words of wisdom, her ability to let me struggle my way through to the other side, her definition of the insidiousness of things…she actually wrote it down on apiece of paper for me, so I could understand how, over time, things just get “worse and worse” and you just accept things along the way.  That there really isn’t a “time” you can pinpoint where things turned.  How simple to understand and figure out when someone logical and impartial can share the facts with you in spite of not knowing all the details!

So WELCOME 2014.  The blizzard outside is a beautiful, white, cleansing snow.  It’s a reminder of another clean start we get each New Year!