Graded Expectations

So, how did your first full week of 2011 begin? Are you filled with optimism and unrelenting resolve to ensure that THIS year will be better than 2010? If so, what will be different? Have you decided to clean up your act, whatever your "act" may have been or is? Are you among the millions who make a list of New Year resolutions only to break them within less a few days and then, after slapping yourself around for not meeting your self-imposed expectations, find yourself in worse mental and/or physical shape than you were before you wrote or typed-out the list?

Such a "tradition" of making resolutions for a new year is the utter folly of placing what may be absolutely unrealistic expectations on one's self based on a page turn on a calendar. Yes, it's important to strive to better yourself in one way or another; however, how long was your list? After writing down your goals did you feel a sense of accomplishment, or were you overwhelmed?

Am I asking too many questions, and, if so, what does all of this have to do with flogging? A LOT! I admit to being cynical, which is something I accept with unwavering pride before I goeth into the inevitable fall, but what's the point in setting ourselves up for failure by placing a big fat list of things we want to change in front of our sweet little or big faces when the most caring move we could make for ourselves is to be gentle, realize what could be improved, take just one important step toward that change and do our best to stay the course - and focus on that ONE THING until you either get it right or admit you might need to set it aside and move on to something you know will work out.

In my understanding of resolutions, the end point is to feel better about our lives/selves, true? Not to immediately feel like a failure because we couldn't lose 10 lbs in a month, or find the best producer for that precious screenplay in the first meeting out of the gate, or, simply stop listening to Justin Bieber tunes after a rapturous few months of falling back into kindergarten during a temporary mid-life crisis. Heh heh.

The flog here is a message to just take it easy, you Type B-, C+ people, and you'll love yourself more, which, in many cases, will ensure that you actually achieve your goal no matter how much time is required. As for you Type A's - tssk, tssk. I bet you aren't even reading this post beyond the headline because you're already at the gym today listening to your favourite music on your iPod while texting your nutritionist to confirm your appointment later in the afternoon prior to arranging next week's therapy session with a far better and possibly more expensive psycho-therapist who will rid you of one more negative person dragging you down because they are exuding "negative energy in your space" and are, quite clearly, in your way toward all you desire....until, one day, you collapse in a heap and realize the only resolution you truly needed to place on your list was how to be a real human being and not a total automaton.

Well, I gotta go now...I have zero resolutions to employ other than spending a bit more time with my mother, at whose abode I am spending a pleasant weekend. Now, that's an immediate positive action I can accomplish without turning into a forced resolution, as it will bring a smile not only to my face, but hers.

.