My Year of Meaningful (2011)

Wait! Wait!!! 2010!!! come back!!!!

I feel like this holiday has gone so fast and I'm not READY. I haven't had any quality time to spend in my brain and just think about any New Year's Intentions or where to go from here. I'm almost kind of depressed because we've been so busy that it's all slid past me and I didn't get to *enjoy* the last week and a half... and I'm starting to feel anxiety about going back down to the bottom of the earth in just a few days.... shiiiiiiit!!!!

While having a few hours off from the craziness just now, using the excuse that LJJ has to take a nap & isn't feeling well (which she's not, she's a sick little puppy) I am grabbing a few hours to myself in our little housey to rest and just process it all while The Mr runs some errands & for once... NOBODY IS VISITING. I clicked over to my blog from NY's day a year ago to see what was going through my mind then and it says this (reminder that I was suffering a case of blood-poisoning at the time):

"So on to this year - I can't really be bothered making new years resolutions because I'm kinda draggin', but I've heard The Mr. say it several times over: the year of positivity, the year of happy, the year of casting negative vibes out the door. So with that I must pick up my ill and melancholy self, a little bit annoyed at some of the last days of 2009 and thoroughly annoyed with the last 3-4 months of 2009, and dust it off and do the C'mon Get Happy dance.

Good things to look forward to this year:
Cape in Feb.
Aus at Easter
World Cup Football 2010 South Africa
USA in July (?) - which, I've decided, with ample planning and effort CAN be as good as Xmas 2008!
Finishing my thesis and becoming Master Master
Being mindful
Being at peak fitness and finding a road race to train for
Being part of the Hash, a group of folks I have grown enamoured with & look forward to seeing each week
Seeing friends, seeing friends, seeing friends!!
Making time to talk to friends either online or on the phone
Harvesting the biggest buttload of home grown veggies out of my own garden, all year
Xmas 2010 in NL, which, with ample planning and effort CAN be *almost* as good as Xmas 2008!"

I notice that I was really fixated on Xmas 2008 which is when we went to the states and had a brilliant xmas and new years with friends, friends, friends including a semi-pleasant family christmas for the first time ever as well as hanging with the hometown crowd including bwuddaman, and did the fun New Orleans trip with Bella and Brandone and the fantastic cross-country drive with Jean and discovered that we really liked the mid-atlantic region...?
I don't really know how that makes me feel, upon reflection... I can remember writing those things as if it was just yesterday, so it's not surprising or weird or anything, and in general, yeah, that pretty much was 2010 for me. I guess I have no feeling whatsoever towards it. I will say that today I am heaving a sigh of satisfaction and relief that I *DID* manage to make 2010 the year of the pushups. In fact I'm going to go do my last ones for the year right after this. I'm not really sure what I have to say about that - I got massive triceps out of it, doing it everyday makes me feel good and I'm satisfied with the amount of time out of my life that it required and am satisfied with it being the most successful NY's resolution I've ever made and stuck to. But now what? Do I still do these things every day? If I don't, will my muscles dissolve? Is there ever any lifestyle change you can do "sort of"??? I wanted to think about these things, dammit, and the last 2 weeks have been so damn busy and frantic that I haven't gotten any quiet time in my head to do so!!!

I wanted to make a list of NY resolutions but again I don't feel like I've really had enough time to refine the list to make it just "the right" combination of "doable" and "worth resolving to do"-ish. If I learned anything from friends' lists of resolutions last year it's that you don't want to overshoot the moon or you'll just end up depressed over not being superhuman and achieving feats of greatness in 1 year. And, another thing: if 2010 was the year of the pushups, should 2011 be the year of the situps? Leg lifts? What do I do about the things I wanted to do last year that didn't materialize? agh! So I guess just to see it in writing here are my options that I am thinking about :
- everyday exercise (i.e. the daily 1-minute workout i'm already doing, but something different)
- train for Cape Town 2-Oceans 1/2 marathon in April
- the year of husbandly romance!
- the year of bluegrass and other music?
- attitude towards work... but what?
- write the LJJ storybook
- put more effort into looking presentable?

Obviously there are some plain old "givens" that I need to concentrate on in terms of self-improvement. Working harder at the office, being a better friend, having more acceptance, patience & tolerance for things I can't control.... being a better friend WITH more acceptance, patience & tolerance for things I can't control.... keeping the positive attitude moving UPWARDS and not backwards. jeez, adulthood is hard. Living in the human community and not being a jackass is hard. It takes WORK, I learned this over the last couple years and I don't LIKE it. I guess the good thing is that New Years gives you the starting line that you need to take the deep breath and say "ok, HERE is where I'm going to kickstart it". I practiced some of the acceptance thing last night when Little Bwudda I.L. (in law) stayed back at our house after the "family drinks night" that we hosted here in our temporary digs for The Mr's family. He let lose some really intense fambly drama problems that he's working through at the moment and really wanted our "outside" perspective on it. God knows The Mr & I are always willing to give our opinions on this sort of thing but I made sure I really drove home the whole "I can talk to you about this forever, but just remember it's only one outlook on the situation and you have to do whatever it is that YOU want to do and only go by YOUR gut feeling, not anybody else's point". I tried really hard not to convince him to do what me & The Mr. would do, but rather just give him a lot of "here's how I/We feel, but don't forget we're all different people" reminders between every answer he solicited from us. Which is easy to forget to do when you're trying to "help". I had to remind The Mr a lot of times too because he is REALLY passionate about some of the topics that came up and some of the problems on the table being that it's his family. He has a tendency to emulate his father much more than he'd like to by doing a lot of (really loud) "this is how it is, and trust me because I'm right" advising when he gets swept up in the current. I suppose we all do including myself so therein is an area for improvement. -sigh- dually noted.

anyway, I'm not really feeling that comfortable in my own brain right now - so I should perhaps stop stressing about the year 2011 here in the last hours of 2010 and just let go of everything and wait to see what "2011" actually "feels like" before I turn into a "idiot" who puts too much "emphasis" on the "new year" and ends up going "air quote crazy" in their sentences.

I'll tell you one thing that is really ruining my concentration right now, though, is this DAMN trash-can-lid-blowing-up thing that is a really freakin' annoying New Year's tradition here in the countryside of The Netherest of Lands.... damn rednecks who fill garbage bins up with explosives and blow the lid off of them. driving me nuts. BANG!!! BANG!!!! BANG!!!! It's so loud you can hear it for kilometers around. While the Mr. and I were peacefully enjoying some speed skating (now THAT's another story all together!) in the beautiful peaceful snowy forest yesterday the local redneck teenagers were going crazy with the explosions. One thing is for certain is that if you're trying speed skates for the first time ever and you have to concentrate, this is NOT handy. And now it's not handy for sick 20-month-olds that are trying to sleep. ugh! arseholes!

LJJ has been a real trooper the past couple weeks. so much so that now she's sick. Lots of kissing funny relatives, lots of crazy kids running around, lots of dutch speaking (she's using her first dutch words though, so that's a good step), lots of being off-schedule, and thankfully lots of SLEEPING. The poor thing is so exhausted every day she's been sleeping from between 8 & 9 pm to between 9 & 10 am every day. She's just so over-stimulated by all the action and new people and people who want to love her and snuggle her and play with her that she's just knackered all the time. And the freezing bloody cold - this is the girl who doesn't own a coat and never wears shoes, let alone has to get packed into 3 layers and hand-constraining mittens and suffocating scarves every time we go out the door. No wonder she's under the weather now.

We have been seeing a LOT of people this trip. All the Mr's friends have come to visit us, even those who had to drive a few hours to do it, which is really nice. A lot of them have REALLY changed, some of them not so much. Most all of them have kids, some of them on the way. They range in behaviour levels from "totally out of control and jumping on the couch" to "really sweet and well-behaved". LJJ has a tendency to watch some of the WWE-style kids with her jaw on the ground and eyes as big as dinner plates, from the safety of the couch and NOT get involved. I really hope she doesn't pick up any violent and crazy traits. But then again what she doesnt pick up here she's probably going to bring home from nursery school with her come January, so I suppose I just better cross my fingers.

In the Friends WithOUT Kids Department, I think the highlight of the trip so far has been Marco & Corne's visit (& Jean's) on account of the massive amount of humor therapy that they brought with them. I really needed the 3 nights of non-family-obligations that were associated with those few days, and the Skip-Bo marathons that deteriorated into slap-happyness and gut-wrenching belly laughs. I really still feel kinda empty now that they're gone, even a couple days later.

In the Family department, I really enjoyed Little Bwudda I.L.'s strangely bizarre and spontaneous 2:00a.m. deep & meaningful heart-to-heart with The Mr and I last night after everyone left. That particular L.B.I.L. was the one that we have never really gotten along with and who is the one with the loudest mouth and the most outrageous cold and unemotional opinions and outlook on the world. Turns out after last night I have a lot of empathy for him that I didn't before and I can see why he acts like such a douche sometimes. I think the truth is he does have a tiny little bit of humanity deep in his heart, he just is completely incapable of knowing what to do with it and how to act towards other people. Turns out he's also just very very nervous about change and new, different experiences. What I took from the whole experience last night was that he really does have feelings for us and that he values our opinions enough that when he's found himself in this really jacked-up pickle, he genuinely wanted to come to us to talk. That feels weird and yet endears us to him because we always thought he was just a big, cold jerk with no emotions or even fibre of softness in his body.

From the 3rd of Jan., The Mr & I are heading off to the island of Texel for 2 days by ourselves. ahhhh. salt water, posh hotel, no baby & NO EXPLODING TRASH CANS!!!! AGGGGHHHH

I guess if "The Year of Romance" is a good idea for me to do for 2011, that's where it should probably kick off. But I need benchmarks and small goals. What are romantical benchmarks and goals anyway? What would those be? Something to ponder. And what would the "year of bluegrass and other music" be? How do I realize that? How do I get that done?

Oh, and finally, I am reading "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen right now and it is REALLY good.

I guess now is as good a time as any to go do those last pushups of 2010. Onwards. Breathe.

Labels: holiday recap, mi familia, The spirit of 2010