My initial reaction to having a new year start was so freakin' what. I wanted to scream that from the full power of my lungs, pushing out every last particle of air as forcefully and loud as possible. The last year wasn't all that great. There was nothing awesome about the past year. It was rather reminiscent of the Mr. Yuk character I saw as a child growing up.
Part of me just wants to pitch a fit, hold a pity party. bury the past year under piles and piles of heaping, stinking garbage.
But, I've never really done much of that destructive self-flagellation, even on the hardest days of the past year. Six years ago, when the world broke into thousands of tiny fragments, each sharper than the last I didn't ask anyone else to feel sorry for me. My kids, God bless them, were with me, helping me pick up the shards and when I couldn't hold them any longer because the remains kept digging in to me, those kids let me sleep away the pain.
Somehow in those sunless days, I managed to put one foot forward, then another. There were days I definitely followed the philosophy of "fake it to make it" and my kids were the only ones who saw through to the truth of the black pit of destruction that colored my life.
Each step, no matter how pain filled, led to another step, slow and stumbling, but that somehow led to another, and then yet another. It wasn't pretty. Far from anything beautiful, the slow progress was still progress. I didn't ask for help. Wounded and barely alive, asking for assistance didn't enter my brain. In retrospect, I should have asked for help but I was really too busy trying to survive.
But today? Today I'm looking at a new year that promises to be just like the old if I let it; if I don't change the formula.
So, I am changing the formula. That's part of my year of dangerous living - being willing to experiment with different variables to obtain a different outcome. I'm packing up, throwing out some of the things that haven't worked in the past. And I'm doing it by setting aside the fear of upsetting other people.
Now before you think this is something about setting resolutions and the like, I can tell you it isn't.
Rather, this is about being aware that there are multiple opportunities to start over. Each day can be a new beginning, every significant holiday can serve as a January 1st substitute. Every semester, every quarter, every birthday. You get the idea?
Along with all those opportunities for a fresh start are the affirmations you get along the way. For me, today, it was an affirmation in church. My pastor talked about fear - the exact topic I have as an underlying theme for this blog.
Already, my new start has stirred the pot of apathy. The blog is now a week old and I've another week of posts ready to go. The formula is changing. It is up to me, and up to you, to continue to add new ingredients to the batter and see and examine what we create and if we like it, or if we need to continue to tweak the recipe or maybe scrape the whole thing and begin anew.
The point is, change is up to us, otherwise we continue on in the same status quo, unhappy, sleeping, living out our lives, drugging ourselves with food, drink, or medicinals as if we are caught in an endless cycle similar to that of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.