Resolve this.

So yesterday we looked back. I am a very reflective person, so that's easy. I am not, however, much of a planner, so looking forward is often idealistic and quite unrealistic. Like how this time last year I thought by this very day I would be 1/2 way out of debt and in a great new job. I was proactive in working towards it, but never really sat down with a set plan. And so no I have quit one job and seem to be still in debt. (Admittedly, I have consolidated my debt and I am working on it...just hard to be aggressive without a reasonable pay check. More to come on that next week.)

So today it's hard not to look forward.

I always make a resolution. I rarely stick to it. The resolutions most often insist that I dive head first into some trendy work out or crash diet and by MLK day I'm over it. So often when we make these unrealistic goals, we think of it as taking something out of our glutenous life. Certainly I have room to remove a vice or two...ahem...or maybe some more. But this year I look to add a positive habit. To not punish myself for loving dessert and champagne. But to this about things which are missing from my life. But what?

The other day I heard a story about a family who lost two young sons to a terrible disease within a year. Not in a car accident in one feel (miserable) swoop. But one by one. A year. The woman was a carrier for this disease and knew that getting pregnant again was not an option.

Hard to imagine how they did it, but they returned home and faced their community knowing that few could empathize and most would pity. But while at a cocktail party they ran into a local Gynecologist who mentioned that she had a new patient of interest. She was very young and didn't want to completely give up the baby but new she couldn't care for the child properly. So the gynecologist talked to her patient and they decided the ailing family would adopt this child.

An amazing story. I mean terribly sad. But the outcome is such a sigh of relief. I have been truly impacted by this story when it was told merely in passing over brunch.

I look to 2011 for my sigh of relief. Now I obviously understand that my plight is no where near the volume of sadness this family faced. Nowhere. But there are a couple of things I have learned from this family.

First, you never know what's ahead of you. It could be more crappy stuff. It could be amazing. But when people ask how things are going, don't be ashamed to share the bad stuff with people too. Yes, after a while you start to feel like Debbie Downer, but as a result, you get an amazing (and often unsuspecting) community working for, with, and around you. All for you. If this woman would have shut herself off, she may have never gotten that second chance with the adopted child. And I am so thankful for the group that has pulled in tightly around me. Family, friends, and sometimes relative strangers. Thank you. I am blessed.

And finally the next thing I have learned has actually led me to my New Year's Resolution. I am one who tends not to try and burden friends with my details. Until it gets too much for me to handle on my own. As a result, it seems that I am only sharing the bad stuff. Add that to the fact that I have a job that is so social, when I get home I hate to talk on the phone. Hate it. I'm not a good chatter. I sucked at Rush for this same reason. If there is no purpose to a call, (making plans, teaching something, learning something) I find it completely asinine. I am always the one to end a call. always.

And so here we are. I resolve in 2011 to reach out to my friends more often just to say hello.

You've been warned.

Hope that 2011 brings you all the joys and happiness your heard can dream. And remember, those of you who don't drink champagne all year round...if you drink it like beer, the first day of 2011 will be miserable. That's why I practice all year round:)

xoxoxo