As a result of the awe-inspiring personal growth 2013 managed to bring about and (as it turns out!) only appeared to completely unravel last month, I was able to limit my 2014 resolutions to just two:
1. I will actually recover from my eating disorder and all its ugly sequelae, including my tendency to characterize every single bad thing I feel as the result of my fatness, because that is asinine.
2. I will actually enjoy what I have and allow those things to make me happy.
With that in mind, attend the list below -- in no particular order, five excellent little interjections in an otherwise continuous veil of freezing-ass cold and approaching returns to the office:
1. Downton Abbey Christmas Special! If you live in England, you certainly have already seen this gorgeous exercise in having Paul Giamatti play Shirley Maclaine's curmudgeonly son, Lady Mary looking beautiful and boring everyone, and Edith being even more awesome than she was evil and jelly in the first season. The best part of this special, of course, is that since the only way to have seen it already would have been to illegally download it, we haven't actually seen it yet and can all anticipate it in vivid, nuanced detail while we wait for Season 4 to air on PBS.
2. BABY PANDAS! I was just focusing on the joy-inducing powers of baby pandas, as per my mom after my latest job interview. But as it turns out, the net total of baby pandas on the planet is actually increasing! I live in the hope that 2014 is the year I get to go to China and see the baby pandas, among other things (such as grown-ass pandas -- also awesome!, the Great Wall, and all the tofu). But in the meantime here are fourteen panda babies cuddling in a crib OH MY GOD!
3. Easter! Okay, so, we're obviously nowhere near Easter. But that dearth of effs I had to give about Advent 2013 has lent itself to so many effs already in preparation for Lent and Easter 2014. Easter's the closest thing mainstream Christians have to a real holiday, in my opinion: while Christmas has been effectively stripped of its less marketable implications and demands, Easter doesn't really lend itself to a secular version once you're over the age of nine.
And I love Easter, because what it does lend itself to is all the ritual and pageantry and silence that didn't really figure into my childhood experience of church. My childhood Holy Weeks focused heavily on my personal sin and how shitty it was I couldn't get it together so Jesus wouldn't have had to die. Except that He always already had to die (for everyone else's sins) but even more so because I had been reading VC Andrews in the car on the way to church.
I don't want to go so far as to say I don't believe in a personal God now; but I do believe that a Being that exists outside of time and space may be looking at things with too wide a lens to want to spend our time together making sure I'm sorry enough for my sins. The idea that Christ's death and resurrection means something other than, and larger than, my personal get out of jail free card, has made all of the things that lead up to Easter for me now -- the liturgies and readings and fasts and foot washing -- a chance to participate in something well outside my everyday life, as opposed to a formal opportunity to reflect on my specific moral failings and the cosmic significance thereof.
4. The awesome Walk Out the Knockout Run in which I will be participating this Saturday. So, running is probably the best thing I did for myself in 2013. Nothing I do -- not therapy or talking to my friends or writing or anything else -- is as reliable a way of beating back my crazy. And, lo and behold, here's an event that combines my love of Helping Others with moving my body from one place to the next. If you're in or around New York, you should come. The entry fee is optional and it is 2.4 miles, people. I'm thinking of dragging my toddler. (If you register, though, you may inadvertently also sign up for their youth soccer league, so... be ready for that?)
5. Children of Promise. This is actually an agency I volunteered with through New York Cares about this time last year -- I had to stop when I started working for CAMBA again. But they. are. amazing. Basically, they do after school programs like mine, but exclusively for children who have a parent in prison. They also do mentoring and therapy and allow you to sponsor a child to go visit their incarcerated parent. This is possibly one of the most amazing things happening in our city, and it's like fifteen minutes from my house! Think of that next time you're like, "What's HAPPENING to Bed-Stuy? Why did I just pay $2.75 for sixteen ounces of coffee?"
As you may have guessed, I sometimes have a hard time being positive. In part, I think, this is because it is so much easier to find common ground among negative things. As ably as I shift from zero to misery over what others may call "minor inconveniences", the things that hold my interest and also make me happy tend to be, like, youth services for incarcerated kids (but also pandas)! Not always the most universal points of connection.
However -- and if I were less obsessively attached to the idea of "symmetrical" versus "non-symmetrical" numbers, I'd make this excellent interjection number six -- bar none, the best thing about the first week of 2014 is how I've decided, for the time being, that the way I am and the things I like are absolutely fine.
So (although I am sure this will totally last, because I am totally capable of accomplishing my goals) I'd encourage you to soak up these efforts at accentuating the positive now, before they go the way of all twelve of my 2013 resolutions (they won't!!!) If adorable urban kids, endorphin rushes, and freaking PANDAs can't forestall your post-holiday letdown -- well, a less optimistic blogger might say there's no hope for you.
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