Hi guys.
Before we get too far into this new year, I thought it worthwhile to officially state my resolutions somewhere. Given the origins of this blog, this seemed like the best venue.
THEY ARE:
1. Call/see family and friends more often
2. Finish thesis by 2012
3. Continue meditating daily
And, obvi:
4. Continue 52 movies/year goal
The breakdown:
1. There are a lot of people on this planet I love. I don't talk to them enough. This really became clear to me while in Viet Nam on a school-sponsored excursion this past summer. The classmate I shared a hotel room with talked to her family multiple times a day, despite being halfway around the world. I talked to my mom twice during the entire two week trip. This struck me as stupid. If some families can swing talking to each other every day no matter what, I can talk to people I love more than once every few weeks.
This resolution is partly due to pure selfishness. I know it'll make me happier if I talk to the people who make me happy about humanity and life in general more often. I avoid calling people out of stress, since talking on the phone is one of very few activities that inhibit my furious multi-tasking. Again: stupid. Talking to people I like makes me less stressed. So let's do that more often.
But also: I was listening to the latest podcast of This American Life yesterday. Part one is about a man who visits his friend after a suicide attempt in a bid to talk him into living. It reminded me of how many people I desperately love, whose lives I am grateful for, and whose loss I could never come to terms with. It made me hungry for the chance to tell each of them I want them here in this life with me. Some people I love very much have been affected by suicide recently, or have thought about or attempted suicide in the past. Out of a more community-focused/nationwide concern, one of Boyfriend's Christmas presents from me this year was a shirt that constituted a donation to the saintly Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project, whose aim is to end the sudden tragic onslaught of young gay people ending their lives this past year. And as a mental health professional responsible for keeping people safe from things like self-harm, maybe I'm just unusually primed to be struck by the aims of the man in that TAL story. In any event, perhaps morbidly, I want to talk to the people I love more often, to make sure they know how beautiful and hopeful my life is because of them, and to make sure they know how immeasurably valuable they are. Even if those dark thoughts never crossed their minds, it just can't hurt.
2. The ambition of this resolution is so terrifying I'm just going to skip it. But it's made.
3. For a few years now I've been waiting for the breakthrough I needed to finally get into a true meditative discipline. This summer, during a trip to visit a family friend, it finally came. All that friend had to do was give me permission to sit for only two minutes a day, and my sitter's block evaporated. I've sat (almost) every morning since then--and typically longer than two minutes. Sometimes you just need to let yourself start small.
4. Like I said: obvi.
Resolutions aside: chugging along, as always. Thesis data stuff is painfully slow, but progress is being made. My testing report is just about complete, which is a huge relief. My testing supervisor wrote me an absolutely lovely recommendation for my externship applications, of which I'm deeply appreciative. And that last paper I have to write will get done sometime... I guess.
Back to work. Once again, Happy New Year!
It's going to be a good one.
<3
PS: Because it never hurts to make sure people know what their resources are:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
800 273 TALK
The Trevor Project
www.thetrevorproject.org
866 488 7386
No comments:
Post a Comment