Saturday, January 15, 2011

Making New Years resolutions/Acceptance, Enjoyment and Enthusiasm

I don't normally do it. This year I did resolve to change one aspect of my life.
I lasted 14 days.
Today I met L for coffee in Kerrisdale and we had a hilarious and illuminating conversation. A lot of it centred around the fact that neither of us wish to work anymore. We both find that we prefer not to get up early in the morning and sit at a desk where people tell us what to do for 8 hours. It interferes with our social, gym and sleep schedules. I would totally be caught up on all my reading, and I would absolutely be onto the "challenging" Sudoku puzzles if I didn't have to work.
That said, we both resist the fact that we have to work too much. Most people have to work. Most people don't want to work. A lot of people are significantly more unhappy with their jobs, and they also get paid less which sucks a lot. Assuming I sleep 8 hours a night, I only have to be at work 28.5% of the time. That's not too bad. It's all relative.
And, as I've mentioned before but only seem to heed for a few days: Tolle says we should either be in a state of acceptance, enjoyment or enthusiasm.
Resenting one's situation is a waste of time and energy. I need to accept it and focus more on the enjoyment and enthusiasm parts of my life.
But back to the spectacularly blown out New Years resolution. It's something I've been struggling with for over two years now. I don't think I want to struggle with it anymore. It's a part of who I am and I am going to choose to accept it. I hope that by accepting it and accepting this particular part of my personality I can be a little more in the here and now and spend less time post-rationalizing things in my mind and more time having fun with my friends in coffee shops.
There's too much life to be had.

5 comments:

judith said...

Yesterday morning while I was up at 4:30 having coffee and watching the news before getting ready to go to a job I wish I didn't have to have, but I do enjoy because I get bored sitting at home, they said it was the day when most New Years resolutions have either already died or bite the dust. I think we should all resolve to not make a resolution, then we wouldn't be kicking ourselves and we'd be living in the now and all that other stuff Tolle wrote about.

judith said...

No, it wasn't yesterday, it was Friday. I got up at 6 yesterday and I didn't watch the news.

Duder said...

Yes. No more resolutions. Except I do resolve to never get up at 4.30am. ;)

Big D said...

Struggling with it sucks. this is my favorite line. 'I've learned to embrace that about myself'. And I'm not sure why but just cracks some people up. It's not supposed to funny.

Duder said...

LOL. I'm probably not supposed to "learn" to embrace this particular thing about myself, but it's easier than reforming.
Spoken like a true hedonist.