RESOLVED

I find myself inexplicably sad. Well, not inexplicably. I could probably give you a really good rundown of all the reasons I'm sad today. Most of them are ridiculous. Which is why I'm not going to provide such a rundown. It's really, really silly of me to be sad about the things that are currently making me want to cry.

So, instead, a resolution. I know it's not New Year's. But I have a resolution to make. And really, we ought to start self-improvement campaigns whenever we realize what we need to do, not only at some date chosen for us by an arbitrarily imposed calendar.

Today, for now, for the next five years: I will not be a selfish mess.

I will probably continue to be a mess, because, um, well. Hi. Have you met me? I'm a mess. I am flaky, and pretty unrepentant about it. I deliberately choose to dedicate my brain space to things like that perfect turn of phrase that I constructed while ten-keying four days worth of sales and reports into a spreadsheet. I remember those words instead of the parking ticket I have to pay, or your birthday.

I am hypocritical, because when other people flake on me the way I flake all the time, I am always crushed.

I am crazy. My emotions operate on a series of mountainous hairpin turns, and I will go from sad to happy and back again faster than a ball volleys at the French Open. (Is it the French Open going on right now? Or the US Open? Whatever. I like French tennis with their old-school clay courts.)

But I will try not to be a selfish mess, which means trying really hard not to let my unreasonable expectations get the best of me. It means realizing when my hurt is valid and when it's not, and only sharing when it's valid. And keeping it to myself when it's not. Because it's really pretty selfish to be dumping on people all the time when the problem is actually within yourself. It's really pretty selfish to be demanding other people's time and attention and energy when you don't really have any claim to them. It's really pretty selfish to monopolize someone, anyone, a whole host of someones and anyones and make sure that all that's thought about and cared about is you.

That's pretty selfish.

I am resolved not to do that. Anymore. I have resolved this in the past, and done fairly well at it, but then I got lazy, and sloppy, and here I am, crazier than I ever was. The problem with this kind of attention-seeking crazy is that it's a self-perpetuating cycle. You become absolutely addicted to the attention. You become downright dependent upon knowing someone is always looking, always reading, always caring.

It is no one's job to take care of you. More properly, it is no one's job to take care of me.

And I am resolved not to try and make it anyone's job.

Here's to emotional self-sufficiency. (I'm going to need a lot of whiskey this winter.) (Just kidding.)