I have to accept that the holidays are finally over. In fact, January is damn near over, and there's nothing much ahead of me but a little bit of the doldrums. Today is the absolute last day of the waterfowl hunting season, so my boyfriend will be sincerely mourning it like he would the death of a very old and very dear friend. Fortunately, he has the job interview coming up, so that should keep him more or less distracted from the loss of his favorite activity.
At and around New Year's Day, several people asked me what my resolutions were, and I responded that I like to make improvements for their own sake and not because of any silly external motivations. Many people make well-meaning New Year's resolutions and so they go to the gym very diligently for 3 or 4 weeks, but then they fall off completely. So the gym that, at the first of the year, is so packed you can't find a single empty elliptical, returns to its normal emptiness. That is when I like to return to the gym.
Well, since I told people that I like to make improvements for their own sake, it is probably time that I tried to make some sort of improvement. I didn't want to be like so many others, full of good intentions but essentially meaningless words, and certainly the vices and the extravagances of the holiday season have made the necessity of a little healthy change even more apparent. It is considerably later than the normal season for developing resolutions, but I figure it's better to be late than not make resolutions at all. And, the fact remains, I like to think that I am making resolutions for myself...and not because people typically make them at the first of the year. My year (and my semester) are already in full swing, and my resolutions have very little to do with my day-to-day routine. But, like all the well-meaning holidaymakers, a little dose of manageable-ness is always appreciated. After all, what good is a resolution that you only keep for a couple weeks? I intend to make permanent life changes for the sake of self-betterment and discovery. If everyone made a few little changes periodically throughout the year, think how much better we would be! In that spirit, I will start with my first goal.
Goal: Become more aware of the world around me. It is easy, while in school, to become part of a self-indulging, self-obsessed bubble. When you live on a relatively self-contained campus, hang out with the same people who are doing exactly the same thing, and only venture out into the real world for the occasional trip to Target, you tend to lose a little touch with reality. The news becomes who is engaged and who is broken up, who is not coming to class at all, and who is on academic probation, rather than an actual reflection of the world and what is really happening. I intend to remedy this situation. I may discover other ways to remedy this situation (graduation will undoubtedly help) but, for starters, I need to watch/read/listen to the news. The news, as it happens, does not include celebrity gossip, entertainment news, or discussion boards about which designer might make Kate Middleton's dress. Even though those things are all interesting and I will, naturally, still have time for them, they will not make up the entirety of my knowledge of the world. My newest thing is NPR, and I think it has made a serious improvement in the quality of my life. Andy listens, too, and not only does it gives us something new and substantive to discuss, it's amazing how many other times the things I learn really come into my day-to-day life. Being better informed makes the world a more interesting and a less confusing and hostile-seeming place.
Other goals may follow in short order, but for now I will just start with one. It is generally a bad idea to try to change your life overnight--those changes almost always fail because it is so difficult to make changes on a massive scale. It is much easier to make small changes gradually. Let's face it, what better time is there to make changes than in the winter, when there's little else to do? You can always make a small change to make yourself an overall better person and that should be a major goal of life in general, don't you think?
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