Friday, January 16, 2009

Don't Step Believing

I totally hear GMon’y’s point.  Why wait until January to do something you want to do to improve your own life?  Well, humans are interesting creatures.  Most of us aren’t totally happy with every aspect of our lives, but we feel nervous and scared about changing things.  A lot of the things we do, but don’t like that we do—such as smoking, drinking, eating excessively, not exercising enough, using bad language, being inconsiderate, not calling people enough, spending too much money, not enjoying life enough, buying too much make-up, etc.—we do for complex psychological reasons.  If anything, I’m sort of relieved that making New Year’s Resolutions is such a popular tradition.  It serves as evidence that I’m not the only crazy one out there.

This year, I’m focusing on religion and attending services regularly.  I often think of how I will raise my children in terms of spirituality, and yet I don’t usually go to my house of worship.  If I don’t do it now, why would I do it then?  Being a good parent is about being a good example.  And I would be a super-hypocrite if I suddenly became someone I’m not now just because impressionable kids are around.  So I’ve started doing that and it’s going fine.  I’m sure whatever happens will be what is ultimately right for me, what I’m comfortable with, and what will be positive for my entire family. 

I think that people make those important changes in their lives in January because a new year is the ultimate symbol of hope.  And when attempting to change major aspects of our lives, we need as much hope as possible.  We need to feel that the change can happen.  But according to my intensive research (i.e. Wikipedia), it can’t.  In a resolution study, 52% of people were confident that they would be successful in keeping their resolutions, but only 12% were.  But I don’t think it really matters.  I just think it’s cool that people resolve to change their lives.  There are societies in which people are truly complacent.  They don’t think about improving things in such a way.  But in America, we do.  However delusional, we imagine our best selves and we go for it.   And we’ve been doing that for long before Oprah Winfrey came into the picture.  I don’t mind that people fail in what they resolve to do, but I would hate it if they didn’t resolve.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

New Years Resolutions

New Years Resolutions are very hard for me to keep! I always concoct these elaborate and detailed schemes to lose weight, run faster, educate myself more, etc. I am gung-hoe and dedicated for about two weeks. Then I lose a few pounds, start to think I look good again and become less dedicated. Or a new season of American Idol begins and my resolution to read instead of watch television wears thin as I begin to laugh at the goons and become interested in the characters.

This year, I made a decision to make two resolutions that I have never tried to make before. I came up with two:

1 – I will not hit 'ignore' on my phone. I have a very bad habit of ignoring phone calls if I am busy and then never checking my voicemails. My mailbox gets full about every two weeks and then I get angry texts from my friends and family demanding that I delete my voicemails because it makes them worried that something is wrong with me. Finally, I started to tally up the all the wasted time involved with checking my voicemails, calling them back, play phone tag, etc. I figured that if I just would have answered my phone on the first ring then I would save myself a lot of wasted time.

2 – I will be a better wife. This was one I have never tried to make before because I have never been a wife at New Years before! I know that you always hear you shouldn't create vague resolutions like this one. But, at times, I find that I could have responded better to a particular situation, done a better job of keeping things organized, or been more supportive towards my husband. I don’t think I am a bad partner, but there is always room for improvement. This one shouldn’t be too hard to keep.

So, there you have it. My 2009 New Years resolutions written down and broadcasted to the world. Let’s see how long these will last… :)

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Read My Lip Gloss: No New Makeup

I'm already squirming to break one of my many 2009 new year's resolutions. Just this morning I seriously contemplated taking a stroll to the nearest MAC store because I had convinced myself that I needed a new blending eye shadow. "Something light, no sparkles," I said to reflection in the mirror, eagerly trying convince myself that it wouldn't be a felony if I bought just one more piece of makeup. Eesh I'm sick. But I'm not going to wait for an A&E Intervention!  And since the first step is, as they say, admitting I have a problem, then here I am-- Girl Wednesday-- admitting I have a problem.  Below is a very pathetic photo essay that explains why one of my resolutions is to stop buying makeup....


In this pile o' hussie-face:  Essie nail polish in "Pink Glove Service" (sexy name!) and some Cargo makeup (comes in round silver tins)- I think the packaging made me feel like I was buying something industrial, minimalist, rough.  Rough, sparkly lip gloss.  I'm not blind to the irony.  I've got a pink Clinique lip gloss tube for when I get sick of the coral Clinique lip gloss tube that's sitting right next to it.  I use neither with any regularity.  There's even some Calvin Klein in there, even though his makeup history is rocky. He manufactured the goods in the 70's and then as far as I know, again in the early 2000's (see above picture shows his lucite-encased eye shadows). And after Calvin closed his makeup department a few years ago, looks like he's at it again.



My Martha Stewart toolbox (containing all the makeup I refuse to throw out) is put to good use:



How practical-- I keep some of the stuff that I don't use every day in a glass bowl on the side.  I'm like a makeup chef on the food network, setting aside the reduction for later basting!
The reserves:



This little, clear cosmetics bag I got at Duane Reade. In here are the regulars: Chanel foundation, Lancome spot cover, MAC fiber mascara, and a MAC blush.  The most unfortunate irony is that I really use only these four things daily.  So why do I keep indulging I ask you!?!
(In the background-- I keep my weekly-cleaned brushes in a flower pot.  Quaint!)



Not to point fingers here, but Girl Friday is kind of an enabler... Thanks Girl Friday! Best gift ever! GF gave me this multi-tiered set of everything a makeup addict could ever dream of. It's got two levels of eye shadows, two lippies, and one big fat layer of rouge (love that word, but you've got to say it in a bad French accent). I think I stopped breathing when I first opened this. I still kind of can't believe it.



One more thing I'd like to share-- this one's by MAC-- pure eye glitter. In a teeny pot. In my dreams I dive into this little tub and when I come up for air I've got purpley sparkles on the tips of my eyelashes and on my fingertips and everything is a spectacular white winter wonderland.




Look. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I'm a healthy eater and I gym, run, and yoga. Video games don't get in the way of me leading a normal, healthy life. I've never had any plastic surgery. I've never bought anything from the Home Shopping Network. ...What other kinds of things do people get addicted to?
Anyway, if makeup is my vice, then I'm OK with that I think. But it is a recession and it's a new year and I think it's time for me, at least temporarily, to come to terms with the fact that I probably have everything I need in my highly organized, makeup library. So until all my mascaras have dried to dust, and until I'm scraping lipstick out of the tube with a tooth pick, I'm closing my purse and sitting pretty.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Resolution: Take Two

G'mony stole my punch line. That said, since I proposed this glorious topic, I figured I would share a bit about my success (and failures) at keeping one particular new years resolution.

When I was in graduate school, I made a resolution to be a better friend. I had fallen out of touch with my college classmates, lost touch with childhood friends, and only had a handful of people I
really thought I could turn times of need or crisis. Recognizing that this mentality of take it or leave it friendship was no way to go about creating and fostering a support system for my adult life, I vowed that year to make a two-fold new years resolution. First, I would be a better friend to my existing friends; and second, I would be an active participant in the academic and social community surrounding me in an effort to cultivate the new and potential friendships around me.

This two-fold resolution was both a success and a failure. In striving for the first goal, I created bench marks for myself- commit one hour each Sunday afternoon to calling and reconnecting with old friends. Screen fewer calls using call waiting, and instead pick up the phone
and chat, regardless of how busy/hungry/sleepy/or otherwise occupied I was. Send emails every few weeks, giving updates, or simply to let friends know I am thinking about them. Ask about life; inquire into their wellbeing; and, above all, listen. Listen intently.

I was very good for a little while at this. I reconnected, I laughed, I felt somehow more complete in my own life, having opened myself to others. But it was really only for a little while. . . the college friendships grew old and weary, and the emails seemed shallow, empty—the platitudes reflecting the aging process and the fact that where commonalities once stood, only distance and memory remain.

As to the second prong of my two-prong attack, I was able to succeed, for the first time in my life, at keeping a resolution. I took a step back from my preconceived notions of law school classmates and my aversion to the artificial realities and camaraderie of force small sections and decided to learn more about my classmates. Rather than identifying them by row or surname, I would learn to identify them by ambition in life, favorite beer, sports team allegiance, favorite past-time, hometown, or other identifying characteristics that had heretofore gone unnoticed in my narrow-minded attempt to treat school as a job. I stopped fighting the system, and embraced it. I was met with the warm embrace of a fantastically diverse group of 10-15 individuals whose friendships each played pivotal and crucial roles in carrying me through the 2.5 years of school remaining.

Sure, there were people in my section whose names I have already forgotten, and there are people who I don’t really care to remember, even though I do know their name. But there are also the people who touched me so deeply that I will be forever changed and forever better for the role they’ve had in my life. There are the girls who I once dubbed our section “cheerleaders,” who both turned out to be remarkable women. One, a southern belle whose opinions, intellectual curiosity, and tenacity, though initially off-putting, helped fuel and foster my own sense of self-worth as an attorney. Whose hypothetical questions and insane attention to detail during intense study sessions expanded my own legal intellect, and whose willing ear helped me through the most emotionally trying nine-month period of my life thus far. The other, a classy city chic whose self-depricating, yet elitist nature meld together into one fantastically loyal walking contradiction. As we’ve moved back north and left the steamy southern humidity behind us, she remains a steadfast friend. The kind who call out of the blue, simply because they were thinking of you. And when I’m behaving myself, I pick up and listen, and through the banter, I am reminded of the value of such friends. And then there were the gentlemen. The island jokester, the sophisticated I-banker, the fresh out of undergrad charmer, and the mysteriously enigmatic boy-next-door. Those four taught me more about myself in a three year span than almost any real friend before me, save the one I will marry. They taught me to laugh, to take myself less seriously, to let go of myself, to relax. They taught me to appreciate the joy of skipping class to sit by the pool, and the fear of avoiding wild dogs crossing the highway. They taught me that the best beer to hold green food coloring is miller high life, how to smoke a cigar, how to lose at black jack, and how to love platonically. Finally, there was the intellectual, future professor and my dear, thick-skinned Detroit-born buddy more opinionated still than any of the aforementioned gunners.

This motley crew is now spread across the country; and I find myself this New Years, realizing that I really ought to return to the first prong of my attack, and make the same goal once again. The failure part of my story is that my efforts at writing, at calling, and email have long since subsided back to dismal, pre-resolution levels. I wake, work, run, eat, and sleep in a relatively tunnel-visioned state in which picking up the phone to call even my dearest, most important friends must be mentally scheduled. And I screen phone calls. Often. I have lost touch with college classmates, and grown apart from all but a handful of highschool friends, and, with the exception of one, I speak only once a month, if that, to each of the above mentioned once-familiar faces. In an effort to prove to myself that these friendships, unlike some of those formed in college dorm rooms, have the strength to endure into adulthood. Perhaps it is the nature of life that we meet folks who will mold and shape who we become, and only a handful will remain our friends into the future. But as I sit here opining to the bloggosphere, I am resolving to put off that process for at least one year, and try, once again, to be a better friend. Because even if I know it would be unrealistic to tell each of these remarkable individuals how much they meant and continue to mean to me every day, I will be certain to send them my hellos more than merely once in a while. And I resolve not only call, but to listen. Listen intently.

Monday, January 12, 2009

A Life Without Bacon is Not a Life at All

Given that we are a mere 12 days into 2009, GirlTuesday has made the suggestion that we write about New Year’s Resolutions this week, which I think is a great idea.

I had the opportunity to speak, at length, with a guy I met this morning as were were on the way to a community service project. After going on and on about how the Earthy-Hippie-OverPriced-Organic-Local grocery store didn’t have grits and soysage at 7 this morning, he started to preach the benefits of vegetarianism (and veganism more particularly; one thing for which I can never see benefits. Give up cheese and sour cream? No way!). I know lots of vegetarians who don’t eat meat for health, environmental, religious, and ethical/animal treatment reasons, but he didn’t really seem to have a reason for his initial decision other than he needed to make a New Year’s Resolution. So he decided to give up meat for the year 1991, and here we are 18 years later, and the guy has stuck to it. His endurance is impressive, but I’m just not sure he knew why he did it in the first place.

Never in my life have I ever met someone who kept a New Year’s Resolution for a year, let alone 18 years (and one that eliminates bacon and fried chicken from his diet – I can see giving up something terrible…, but bacon?! Now that’s dedication), so I am quite impressed. And dumbfounded. I have never really understood the point of New Year’s Resolutions, and have never been inclined myself to make one. If there’s something different I want to do in my life, I just do it. I don’t see the point in waiting until January (unless of course one New Year’s eve, while bowing to the porcelain gods you decide to give up drinking….then it might as well start immediately). If there’s something that you want to change about yourself badly enough, you should be inspired to move on it quickly; I think if you have a need to put it off so that you can make an official New Year’s Resolution, then you’re probably not that interested in change anyway. And sorry to say, you’ll probably fail. Take all of the overweight women in my office as an example. They’ve been planning for the diets they all started last week since…oh….October. There were complaints of “I can’t fit into my winter clothes” starting around the first of the month, but nothing was done because “the holidays are coming up, and it’s hard to be good during the holidays.” The holidays? What holidays? Columbus Day? Halloween?

I don’t mean to sound overly cynical or judgmental, I wish everyone well in their resolutions, but I hope that people are doing them for the right reasons and that they can stick with their resolutions.

So this year, I’m making my first ever New Year’s Resolution. I’m giving up cauliflower. I hope I can stick to it.