The End
It’s that time of year for New Year’s resolutions. You know the ones: “This year, I will lose 20 lbs.” “This year, I will join the gym and exercise 5 times a week.” “This year, I will not fight with my spouse.” I’ve set them all. I’ve failed at most. Or if I succeeded, they weren’t sustainable for me. For example, I can’t remember how many years I’ve committed to losing 20 lbs. and succeeded! But somewhere in that year (or the next), the 20 lbs. came back. It’s sort of like that $10 in your Venmo account. It’s there, you pay a friend with it for takeout, and then she pays you back $10 for a movie ticket. Nothing really goes anywhere.
I’ve set other goals as well. A few years ago, I set a goal to do a yoga asana (body poses) practice every single day. How’d that work out? Well I think on morning 7 or 8, I didn’t feel like practicing. So it didn’t work out. And then where was I? I mean if I’ve blown the whole year on day 7 or 8, why should I bother to continue to do yoga? That was not my best yoga year (if you are counting “best” by counting the number of days I practiced). I think I attended maybe 100 yoga classes that year. I realize for some that could be a big number, especially those who have never placed a toe on a yoga mat.
I guess what I’m getting at is that with all those years of New Year’s resolutions, I realized that the resolution doesn’t help. And like the yoga one or the weight cycling ones, they can hurt. Another thing I’ve noticed is when I plan my New Year’s resolution for January 1, December becomes a bust. I think things like, “Well, I’m going to do a yoga practice every day starting January 1st, so why bother today?” Or the famous, “Starting January 1, I’m going to eat healthy. Today, it’s time for chocolate covered Joe Joes!” If I offered myself those delectables everyday, I would probably eat less of them and get less stomachaches! I would have to stock up however. They’re only available around the Xmas holiday season. (Why is that, Trader Joe’s?)
Still, I do think the New Year is a nice time to take a look at what I am doing in my life and come up with some intentions for the New Year. It’s a good time to ‘reset’ and think about my future. I’m not making any 5 year plans but just taking a look at the landscape of my life and thinking about where I want to direct myself.
So, here we are at the end of 2021. This is blog post number 52 for the year. I was a bit amazed that I made it through this many blog posts. As a reader, I don’t shame you if you haven’t read all of these posts. Like I say on the “About” page of my website, “I started this blog to start listening to myself.” Here we are, almost 5 years later, and I am still listening.
Anyway, back to the end of the year. In 2017, I made a list of 17 things I wanted to complete in 2017. I finished them all. I did the same for 2018. In 2019, I couldn’t get through the entire list. After beating myself up, I realized these lists were dumb. I wanted to do things in my life that I enjoyed, not check off a box. So I vowed no list of 20 for 2020. But...I did create a “todo” list. It included things like hiking 65 unique hikes in honor of my friend Johanna’s 65 years of life (she died at the end of 2019). I managed to complete all the hikes. The list also included travel to 12 countries. Well clearly, that didn’t happen.
This year I decided to create another mini list. I included:
Publish a blog post every week this year (DONE)
Get vaccinated for Covid-19 (DONE 3x)
Hike 80 hikes (Well not really...)
Attend/teach 200 yoga classes (Did I?)
Keep a gratitude journal every day (I think I tossed the journal back in June. I was also using it to track the yoga classes....)
I figured these last three would be easy. I love hiking. I didn’t say 80 unique hikes, so in theory I could hike the same trail 80 times. As for yoga, I’ve attended over 200 yoga classes in the last two years. I love yoga. So how hard could it be to do that again?
It wasn’t easy. It was hard. First of all, the summer was HOT. It’s hard to hike when it’s so crazy hot here. Secondly, I lost a lot of stamina in the middle of the summer, so that made hiking and yoga challenging. Thirdly....80 hikes. I did do some great hiking this year. In April I went to Bryce NP, Kodachrome Basin State Park, a random slot canyon, and Kanarraville Falls. In October I hiked in Arches NP and Dead Horse Point State Park. Before, between, and after these trips, I did plenty of hiking in my local area. I even hiked on a trip to Lake Tahoe. I posted pictures of my hiking trips on my website. Until I didn’t. The effort of posting the photos with the text “hike 25/80” became just too much for me. Looking at the big gap between the number of hikes I had done and that 80th hike I felt like an under-performer. Clearly, this is not why I hike. I hike to enjoy the outdoors! I hike to enjoy feeling my body move. I hike to connect with my friends. I DO NOT hike to be able to say, “Hike blah blah 80/80.”
Let me speak specifically about yoga. I love yoga. I know that when I practice yoga, I am connected to my body. I reach my edge and I can reach within myself. It can be scary and hard; it can be easy and exhilarating. It’s a point in time where I can make a choice about what I want yoga to be for me. That said, it’s not something I like to do to check off a box. I mean, being so intune with myself is not about social media or telling someone how special I am because I went to 200 yoga classes last year. So somewhere in the middle of my year I stopped counting. I said to myself, “This is bullshit. I’m not counting anymore.” Then I just stopped. I didn’t stop going to yoga. I did stop counting classes. My main yoga teacher does keep track of our attendance, and I could reach out to her to get more specifics on how many classes I attended. But I won’t. It’s just not worth it to me. Plus, I’ve attended other classes. In fact, there was that loss of stamina I mentioned. With that loss, I missed a fair bit of what would have been part of “the 200.” Now I know that I go to yoga classes when I want to and my schedule allows.
The journal. Ugh, this too turned into a slog. I found myself grasping for gratitude. Really? In the middle of a pandemic when I was lucky to be alive and healthy every day, I was struggling? Well, really it seemed to be the forced point of it all. I mean, I HAD to write something. I sometimes felt disingenuous filling in the lines of my journal. It was more that I didn’t want to miss a day, I didn’t want to have a blank day and miss out on the perfection of a gratitude journal EVERY DAY. I know that gratitude is important to me. I know my heart feels full when I express my gratitude. But this exercise felt like forced gratitude and that just felt icky. So, sometime in June I tossed the journal. I told myself it just didn’t matter. I was as grateful of a person as I was going to be. This dismissal was a way to fight back at my Judge Judy and connect with my authentic self. Better yet, it was a way to be compassionate with myself.
So here I am, about to start 2022. Will there be a 22 for 22 list? Hell no. Will there be a couple of things for 2022 list? I’m not sure. I’m all for setting intentions. I often set them at the beginning of a yoga class or even at the beginning of the day. But for an entire year? Should I write a blog post every week this year? I can intend to write one every week. Perhaps that will be my intention. How about hiking and yoga? Will those happen? Sure! But I don’t need to set a goal. Or wait! Maybe the goal is to enjoy these experiences.
Wanna learn more about not setting resolutions? Check out this video, no resolutions.
