Resolutions, Revolutions, and Revelations
It’s strange to say it, but in some ways the past two years have been some of the best of my life. That’s something that I don’t say very often - it feels insensitive, considering the hardships that other people have faced, but hopefully everyone reading this has their own good fortune to celebrate, or at least doesn’t mind my happiness. New hobbies, new friends, professional and creative success… I feel really lucky to have stretched myself and grown in so many ways recently, and I know that I’m stronger for it.
One of the things that all of this growth has highlighted for me, though, is how little I think of myself sometimes. And yes, I understand the contradiction inherent in someone feeling like they’re interesting enough to have a blog where they post photos of themselves and long essays about their thoughts and feelings, while simultaneously feeling unattractive and boring and unlikable and bad at everything. That contradiction can act as another hurdle for me at times, because I feel like if I open up about how I feel about myself, and what those emotions do to me sometimes, I’m just going to look attention-seeking and full of myself. As a therapist once told me, though, what’s wrong with asking for attention when you need it?
There are a few things that I want to do differently in 2022. Some of them are concrete things - I’m going to be better about building my savings and paying down my debts; I’m going to compete in a bodybuilding competition with an eye towards winning; I’m going to practice my Spanish consistently and become conversational by the end of the year. Others are a little bit more nebulous - learning to love myself even when I’m not perfect; being open with people about what I need from them, rather than expecting them to intuit what I need and feeling like they don’t care about me if they fail to do so; trusting other people to be honest with me about how they feel about me, and not assuming that they’re “just being nice” when they tell me that they like me or they value our friendship.
So for 2022, my resolution is this: I will remind myself, often and enthusiastically, that I have worth as a person. That I don’t need to prove anything to anyone - not how smart I am, not how hot I am, not how productive I can be. That there are behaviors that I might like to change, but that I, as a person, am just fine as I am.
