good intentions

If I could sum up 2011 and possibly 2012...I probably wouldn't.  I don't know.  I am an eternal optimist who is trying to convert over to becoming a  that actually is not true.  It's not that I am an optimist...it's that I have been naive and oblivious.  Not always, but often.  My rose colored glasses haven't been so much about seeing the good in all things, but about having blinders on to all the other colors that exist.  The rose colored glasses haven't been that helpful.  And to be honest, neither has my internal compass.

It's not that 2011 has completely sucked...because it hasn't.  But there have been some hard lessons learned and some moments that I wish I could take back.  The optimistic part of me says that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  But sometimes I think that what doesn't kill you makes you bitter and resentful.

Here's the good the bad and the ugly of 2011:

Good-

• The small things- at nights around the dinner table, when reading with my kids at bedtime, when snuggling with Garrett, when having deep talks with Dalton or Shelby, when dancing with the family to fun music in the front room, when hiking with Gavin and the kids, when seeing the kids excel at something- and the calm that I feel in those times.
• My three year old becoming potty trained.  Diaper free at last.
• My three year old talking up a storm, to relieve my worried mind that he never would.
• My son liking  loving his new school, The Arts Academy.
• My classes at the U.  Great classmates, interesting subjects, and good grades.
• Our family trips- Boston in the spring with Dalton and Shelby, Moab and Pinetop in June, San Diego in July, Phoenix in November, and Puerto Vallarta in December...all perfectly memorable and much easier this time around with the kids ages.
• My mommy-needs-to-be-alone-trip to Snow Canyon this fall, thanks to Gavin.  Sanity returned.
• My bookgroup.  Once a month I know that I am guaranteed to have a thoughtful, and most likely spirited conversation with about a dozen really wonderful and generous women.  On top of that we will have great food and drink, and stay up way too late...What a gift.
• Harmon's opening and bringing Emigration Market back.
• Shelby's soccer team.  Coaching a bunch of six to seven year old girls in a sport that I don't know much about, has turned out to be one of the most fun and exhausting experiences to date.  Seeing Shelby and the other girls grow in emotional and athletic confidence has been a joy.
• Peace with my Mom.  This came late in the year, but late is better than never.  Not saying there was turmoil before, but now there is much more serenity.  Like we have both raised the white flag when it comes to trying to change one another.  Hopefully this is a long term thing.
• My healthy, happy(ish) kids that seem to be on the right track.  Knock on wood, but I think I haven't completely screwed them up.  I may exhale a bit now since I have been holding my breath for the past ten years, sure that I was going to bomb big time.
• Gavin.  He is good...that is for sure.  

Bad-

• Expectations of (life, marriage, school, government, religion...pretty much everything).  Lesson learned: lower expectations.
• Time wasted (in the car, on the phone, in meetings, worrying, obsessing, feeling sad, feeling bad, feeling guilty, and feeling regret).

Ugly-

• The Local Historic District debate in our neighborhood and the TWO YEAR drama that ensued.  Feelings hurt, neighbors moved, time sucked= stupid, stupid, stupid.  Thanks City Council Woman Love and Mayor Becker for a giant waste of everyones time, and every tax payer's dollar.  I think you must have meant well, but seriously WTF?
• Congress (inept would be a better term).  The most corrupt and stupid group of people ever to assemble for a common cause.  
• Utah's legislature.  Ignorance knows no bounds.  
• My self worth (at times).

I'm forgetting a lot, I know.  But there are the big ones.  I am reading a book (thanks Dad for the Christmas gift, called Spontaneous Happiness.  It is really changing the way I view happiness and my darned eternal quest of it.

Also, I realized that the reason that the movie Melancholia disturbed me so badly, is that I saw myself in each of the two characters.  The one played by Kirsten Dunst was so depressed that she did not live her life but lived in fear.  The older sister, on the other hand, trying to script, stage and create every life experience to be perfect.  Neither was really living.  In the end, they could not control when their lives were going to end (can any of us) and both was faced with the realization that they had failed in a way, at living a fulfilling life.

Two of the final scenes in the movie just about undid me.  In one, the older sister is carrying her young son, trying to save him from the upcoming end of the earth, as if she can control this approaching catastrophe in any way.  Her powerlessness, and more importantly, her refusal to acknowledge her powerlessness, was striking (eye-opening) to me.  In another scene, the same sister is planning out the last moments on Earth, before the world is annihilated, scripting it to be some type of lovely, poetic experience.  Her desire to script everything, instead of experience it, hit too close to home for me as well.

If I have one desire for this "new year" it would simply be to simply be.  Yet I know that for me that is a monstrous undertaking.  Becoming physically more balanced and healthy would be nice too.  As well as feeling more at peace when it comes to organization.  Maybe being more light hearted would be a great one as well.  Did I say that I don't make new year's resolutions?  Here's to the new year...another day, another attempt at getting it right.  Life is good.