I recently read an article about using identity based habits to stick to goals and have started trying to wrap my brain around using this kind of thinking to stick to and possibly even achieve my goals for 2013. My goals for 2012 didn’t all pan out, but they did carry through and I would like to keep myself focusing on some of them. Looking back at them should bring me a little bit of satisfaction in the changes I’ve made in my life, but honestly it is a little discouraging. I’ve been wrapped up in a cocoon of bad habits in an attempt to numb myself to the tempest of emotions the recent changes in my life have brought about.
These recent changes, consisting of moving from MA to ME to live with my family, getting a job at an oil office and a dear one departing, have come about really quickly and consist of everything that I’ve been trying to not have in my life for the past 2 years. I didn’t want to come home. I didn’t want to leave my community, the state I’ve been calling home, the public transportation system. I wanted to work in a salon, I didn’t want to put effort into getting a cosmetology license so that I wouldn’t use it. I didn’t want someone I care for to die.
As a consolation, moving home and not working in a salon have become such trivial issues when compared to the death of a loved one. Anything that can comfort me, like having a place to live and a job, have become parts of my life I can hold on to. These simple things can remind me that God hasn’t forgotten me, that He is still working on me and with me and that He still picks me up and puts me where He wants me to be. I try to remember that daily, that He is good and for me, because when I don’t I remember the catastrophe that tipped the scales in favor of this plan. I remember that someone is missing, and he won’t be coming back. I catch myself thinking of things to tell him and then I remember that he’s dead. He will die over and over again for the rest of my life.
I have been rereading The Sky Is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson, a story about a girl whose older sister dies suddenly. I can’t read it all the time because it brings up the rift that developed with much expediency over Christmas between me and my sister, as well as the kind of mourning that I’m in denial about going through. It’s comforting though to see that I’m not the only one who becomes irrational and unhinged after someone dies. I am not the only one who sees facade or fear and can’t stop from pointing it out. I have taken stock of my life and decided to make some of my goals synonymous with priorities, and to put them in their proper order. These goals/priorities have become even more like the ones I had as a child, which could be progression or regression, depending on the day. One of them is “Don’t be afraid to start from scratch” and it seems to be exactly how I’m starting my year off with in some ways. I’ve also decided that I will not hesitate to be honest as often as I have in the past. There is so much that can be resolved, discovered, sorted if people would start saying what they mean and feel instead of what is proper and polite. Confrontation doesn’t always mean a fight, it can mean a revelation. It also means being a little more honest with myself about what I want. Not that it’s helping anything. My head is a scrambled mess and my heart is a sea shell at the bottom of the ocean.
“Let me just unsubscribe to my own mind already, because I don’t get any of it.”
So while I am trying to become a little more like the kind of person that I want to be I have come across some obstacles. They are mostly made up of my own habits and decisions, but I refuse to let that stop me. I also sometimes refuse to try to change, but I have started slowly to build upon habits that will change the kind of person I am. For instance, I’ve started eating more salads.
Dirty Sean 