Going To A Goal-Goal

Well, it’s been January for almost two weeks now. That’s enough time to have the test results back on your resolutions. Sit down – oh right, you’re already sitting down.

Let’s have a look, shall we?

Those of you who are still plugging away deserve applause. Auntie is clapping and smiling and very proud of you. All the darlings in this group can go back to flossing your teeth or exercising or reading Serious Literature or not biting your nails or whatever it was you resolved to do. Congratulations, and keep up the good work.

This is for the rest of you.

Auntie gets it. Change is hard. That deserved an exclamation point but instead I’m going to emphasize it by reminding you that change is so hard that Auntie doesn’t resolve to do it no matter how much she may need to.

(Viz., it’s been ten days since my last post.)

You made a resolution, or more than one, to change something you don’t like about yourself and/or your circumstances. This is huge.

(Unless you’re one of those superfit people who claim to need to lose weight. That’s just annoying. But who am I kidding? They’re over in the health and fitness section of the blogosphere. Never mind.)

Where was I? Oh, right. You took a long look at yourself and figured out what needed to be fixed in order for you to get closer to happiness. In a sense, that’s an end in itself. Understanding the problem is half the battle. (Yo, Joe!)

If it had been a little thing, you would have just done it like a snap of the fingers. No, this was something big.

In fact, it was something so big that you needed the symbolic push of a New Year.

Okay, so you missed perfection. The inertia of a bad habit or the difficulty of a new goal was too much to overcome right off the bat. Of course that’s discouraging. But it’s still a New Year, and you can try again. Please try again.

I believe in you.

I’m going to floss my teeth now.