resolutions, take 2

So, nursing school started up yesterday and it's already wrought havoc on my 2013 Intentions. If you recall that my big Goal/resolution had to do with fixing global poverty, you also may have noticed that I'd either downgraded my ambitions considerably or -- like any number of resolvers whose intentions to change are anemic enough to sit and stay until January 1 -- just didn't really mean what I said.

Well, I mean, I did start sponsoring Hardthaven and I am choosing fair trade gifts now, when I buy gifts, which is rare. But, as I have kvetched about before, the solution to global poverty generally seems to be to gve people money, and, as I am not working, I have none of that. My suspicion is that in this case, a more helpful New Year's resolution might have been to set more realistic goals. (Why does no one ever choose that)?

And then, of course, there's The Kid. As in, I wish I could pick up overnight shifts at your homeless shelter, but: The Kid. As in, I should have straight A's in nurseing school, but: The Kid. In this respect -- and only this respect! -- parenthood is the new bulimia. Who is really going to argue with this excuse?

As it turns out, you know, people. People will, if not argue, at least insnuate that having a child  is just another excuse, akin, maybe, to relying on public transportation or having a flu that won't go away. Officially, we can't say you blew it, but don't expect our sympathy when you stop getting scheduled at work or can't get a new job or are no longer Accomplishing Anything with Your Life. What, did you think it would be easy? If you didn't want to career around the subway with twenty pounds of squirming mewlery in your arms, your entitled ass should have gone on the pill.

To be fair, there are people -- awesome people -- who point out to me that, as a mom, it may be unnecessary and counterproductive to predicate my self-worth on the number of starving Ethiopian children I've saved or cases of malaria I've prevented or the number of nights I spend with the homeless. These people have always been of the (questionable!) opinion that I am a valuable and excellent human being, regardless of the impact I'm not having on The World and Its Problems. Their presence in my life is one of the most constant and inarguable examples of grace that I know.

So, of course, I keep them in a little pocket of my mind and give the subway-sprawlers and devotees of Just Being Honest free reign to make me miserable.

It has occurred to me at some point -- while walking The Kid along Pacific Street at 4 am? While trying to drown the inevitable despair of checking my empty email-box with another cup of coffee? -- that People Who Help People, really, those people I beat myself up for not being, usually are not doing it in order to feel okay about themselves. That my resolution itself -- to help faraway and desperate people while not losing sight of my own life -- may be in need of an inversion. Maybe I need to:


1. Learn to appreciate and experience the things I already have in my day-to-day life, and to value myself in relation to those things, before

2. Looking for concrete ways to help people who -- however concrete and real they are in reality -- are essential abstract to me.