A New World of Me

So it is a new year, and with that comes the typical new outlooks on life. I almost never have resolutions for the new year, but this year I decided that I will do things a bit differently. In this and future years, I am vowing to myself to move towards the next phase in my life. This is not, as I see it, a resolution in the sense that I am giving up something, or adding something that is going to be dropped later on; this is an opportunity to move myself to a higher plane of being, to really re-evaluate on a daily basis what is and is not healthy – for myself and the world – and what action or nonaction can be taken to further myself on my personal path.

The major area I would like to focus on this year is finances. I must say that I have very little experience in the world of finance; as a child I was given neither allowance nor lessons on the value of saving, etc. This is not to say that I blame my upbrining or anything, but it’s a simple fact. When I wished to buy something, I usually had only to ask for the cash and it was given to me, or not, depending on the circumstance. Now, as an adult, I am forced to self-discipline, which I have never been very good at. But I can no longer use the excuse that “I’m bad at it” to keep me from gaining control. I am working on a feasible budget that will make sense and that I can stick to; I have started drafting lists of necessities and desires, with the hope that seeing them in black and white will provide better perspective.

The one thing that really concerns me is my compulsive habit of spontaneous spending. I tend to psyche myself up into justifying a buy at the moment, and usually don’t really regret it later. This brings me to another set of changes, which can be summed up as “gaining control of self”. As an Introvert Intuitive Thinking Perceiving person (as per the Myers-Briggs), I tend to bounce around a lot - figuratively speaking. My mind is constantly racing and I can’t seem to settle on any one thing for very long. Some may call this Adult ADD – I wouldn’t know if this is an accurate diagnosis, as I haven’t been tested for it. Whether it is or isn’t, I think my focus should lie entirely on overcoming the mental chaos. Somewhere along the way I have forgotten the lessons I learned through Buddhism and meditation: remain centered, acknowledge and release, transform the negative into a positive, etc. Recalling some of my poems from 2004, I can clearly see a different me, a me that was more quiet, more reflective. I have lost some of that, I think, and it must be regained if I am to create a me that is whole. There are times now when I feel that it is too hard to think, even.

So, how do I move forward to reach these goals? I could say the typical things: meditate each day, eat right, exercise, write every day, knit, record every penny spent and saved, etc, etc. These are resolutions that have a high potential of failure, so I’m not going to focus on them. Of course they’re important, but I think that what will help me the most at this time is to focus on reflection, daily reflection, whether it be written, as this is, or simply mental. Knowing myself to the extent that I currently do, I have faith that, upon reflecting for a time, however small that time is, the choices that I need to make will become abundantly clear, as will the will to go forward and bring them to action. As the great mage says, there is only do or do not. There is no try.