resolutions revisited

I've been thinking more about New Year's Resolutions. The cool (neurotic?) part about having my birthday so close into the year is that I annually give myself the fourteen days between the first and the fifteenth to reflect and decide on some resolutions. I've been thinking a lot about devotion and discipline and I've noticed a few things - while I am devoted and disciplined about checking my Email or Facebook stalking or watching TV for at least thirty minutes to a couple hours every day, I hardly care to wash my face or brush my teeth every night before going to bed, let alone have a regular schedule of journaling or prayer or jamming out on an instrument, even though I know how good it is for me. My mom used to drive me crazy by saying, "If you worked this little bit (usually it had to do with practicing piano or clarinet), think about what would happen if you actually put your mind to it." 

All that plus thinking about how taking care of a baby is very repetitive and finding joy (zen?) in the repetition of sleeping waking changing feeding repeating is in itself a discipline.  So then I got to thinking about setting aside time during the day to do...whatever...but making that as much as a priority as peeking at the FB a few times a day. What can I create? Where will it take me? What are the goals that I have that I don't take the time daily to achieve? 

This last one is difficult for me in the way that writing a thesis was. I was always the 4:00am writer of papers due at 8:00am four hours later kind of person and it worked for me, so writing a paper (or heck, working on a book) over a long period of time was maddening. Is maddening. I'm a procrastinator by nature. But in doing that in life I end up wasting my time on say, mindless HBO miniseries, and then I have no right to complain about the arms I wish were toned and gorgeous or be frustrated with resting on the laurels of what is familiar musically in a therapy session. Of course there must be a balance, but living a life where creativity is pretty much mandatory...I can't NOT be crocheting or musicking or sewing or gardening - it makes me crazy..."taking a break" means PLAYING! Like music therapy school homework of practicing guitar to which I say OKAY!

I guess what I mean is I usually have the same goals every year. This year I'm resolving to not waste time NOT going after them, every day.