Resolutions

I'm big on resolve. Some of my best experiences have come from resolutions. For example, my November 1st, 2001 Resolution was: Get rid of 10 things a day. My house was messy. It was small and had terrible closet space. I either was going to live like a crazy old lady with clutter covering every surface, or I was going to have to get rid of enough stuff so everything fit into my dinky closets. (I am just too busy *cough* lazy to pack and unpack my storage all day long. My stuff has to fit in one visible layer inside the closet or it ends up in a stack outside of the closet).

It was sometime in March 2002 when I walked into my house and noticed that it looked tidier...and 1500 items lighter.

I still practice this resolution seven years later. It's something that helped me downsize by 75% in the last six months so I could move into Dinky Manor with Mr. Foxypants.

Mr. Foxypants and I spent literally all day organizing the living room. It still looks like hell. But, in addition to collecting an entire box of stuff for Rose's garage sale, we managed to get all of the boxes that were sitting in the middle of the room emptied or out to the garage. Now it just looks like a messy room instead the home of insane squatters. No, really. Our living room looked so terrible that Jehovahs Witnesses walked up onto our porch yesterday morning, peered in through the front window, and then left without knocking.

While cleaning, I happened to find my New Year's resolutions from 1998 which were:

Buy at house
Pay off debt
Keep a checkbook
Wear sunscreen every day
Learn to crochet
Make $2000 garage saling

I kept those resolutions! I bought a house that year! I paid off debt!

I think that was the last year that I managed to fullfill all my New Year's Resolutions. That was ten years ago.

One of my New Year's resolutions of 2008 was to commit a random act of kindness every single day. Which I've been pretty good at doing.

And sucky at documenting.

So, my July 6th, 2008 resolution is to blog about my niceness experiment in a less shoddy, unorganized manor.

*****

I called my friend Lisa today to talk to her about her job problems. I know that she's stressing. She's got a tantalizing job offer from a good company that makes quality product...that's just not sexy. Although the pay would be fabulous, she wonders if she'll feel too far removed from the action if she takes a non-studio gig.

I tell her to decide what would really make her happy and take steps to get to happiness...where ever that that path takes her.

This advice does nothing to alleviate her worries. She wants to get married. She wants a house. She wants stability. Yet, she really doesn't know what she wants for her career. It's all too confusing.

She frets: "I'm really considering this offer because the money is so good. But I don't want to feel like a whore."

"It's Hollywood. You're a whore already." I tell her. "You might as well be a whore with a house."

Somehow, this statement seems to placate her more than the concept of following her bliss.