I'm now counting down to my 26th birthday. Pretty exciting stuff. Birthdays are not such a huge deal to me, but I am genuinely enjoying getting older. Twenty-six is just another step in the right direction - every year I'm growing wiser, more gracious, more thoughtful, less silly and more comfortable in my own skin. Realizing I have a long way to go until that Susan Taylor/Toni Morrison/Cicely Tyson hybrid I aspire to develop into (aimin' high...lol), I'll take every year I can get because I am still green and clumsy and at times, still careless and silly and insecure. So, as I'm thinking about my impending birthday how about deciding on some things to work on this 26th year on earth.
Here it goes (in no particular order):
1. Accepting my body for what it is...and isn't.
So, I'm not "thick" or curvaceous or perfect. And...? There are still some selling points. No one but me expects me to be perfect and that's just silly. As long as I am being kind to myself and treating me right, I should be happy with what I have and what I don't have.
2. Being less reactionary
I react strongly - sometimes too strongly - to nouns and verbs and adjectives (basically, a variety of things). I'm kind of an intense person that feels things viscerally and many times it's a great thing. When something is good, I can appreciate it for all it's worth...like a mountain-top view or a swim in the ocean or time with someone I care about or just a beautiful day. But when something feels bad, oh goodness...it really sucks and I react accordingly (according to my experience and not necessarily according to how I should react). This year, I am going to work on taking a deep breath, or two, or three, or thousands before acting - even if it seems simple in the moment, complexity reveals itself in time.
3. Budgeting better
There are lots of things that I want to do and do them, I'm gonna need a
Developing a reasonable budget that allows me to do some of these things (traveling, investing, paying off debt) and also has me putting plenty aside for a rainy day is a necessity. Now that I have a big girl paycheck to work with, this is definitely a priority...
4. Being more sensitive
Surprise, surprise...I'm a Cancer so this supposedly shouldn't be hard. I should be the pinnacle of sensitivity and empathy, but alas, I've been known to not do such a good job at picking up on subtleties. Perhaps the truth is, as a defense mechanism, I don't assume anything that isn't explicit...meaning that if someone hasn't said it or expressly put it out there, it doesn't exist. However, sometimes some things (feelings, thoughts, etc...) really do exist and I need do a better job seeing them. Maybe this is as simple as trusting my intuition or allowing myself to presumptively empathize with another person. How about trading "beyond a shadow of a doubt" with "beyond a reasonable doubt"? That might be a good place to start.
That should be enough for one year, right?
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