With Great Resolve
From Sasha
Well, I'm coming in just under the wire here, peoples! Eight hours til 2008 is officially over in California. I'm not always one to make New Year's Resolutions, but I have great hopes for 2009 (for the U.S. and the whole world, really, but I'll keep it personal here) and I believe that "putting it out there" has great power. What's more "out there" then this blog, read by a hundred strangers and friends every day? what if my own personal Wish Fairy is reading it, too, and she is just dying to know what direction I want my life to go next year?!?!? Out with em, then!
1. To pay off my credit cards completely!
Yes, I was once young and foolish... and then a little older and foolish... let's just say I've been dragging these around with me for a while, paying a little more than I have to each month, but getting nowhere fast. It's been a year since I used one of them, which is awesome, but now I want em outta here completely. I realized this year that what I budget for my monthly payments could be going to savings for a trip to Oaxaca or Dublin... which I deserve! (But not on credit!) I am shooting for 100% solvency on my birthday. Wish me luck... and tenacity!
2. To bring my Etsy salary to the level of my day job salary!
So far so good... now I want to keep learning, refining, and managing my time and energy efficiently so that I can make the most out of my Etsy endeavor! As I've said before, thank goodness for Etsy, it is a real God(dess)-send to me. No let's rock it!
(Um, don't drink and drive tonight, by the way! These kids above are really going to get busted; they're not even old enough to have their licenses!)
3. To let my music be a channel for pure creativity and fun, untrammeled by notions of traditional "success" or "acceptance"!
Can you imagine that I sometimes fall prey to these demons? This last year was a but of a roller coaster ride, since we played more shows than ever before. My ego went crazy when I made it into the paper-- not once but twice! But then my ego got greedy and I sort of felt like the world owed me a buzz, and I started to take it all waaaay too seriously. Now I've had a couple of months of a break from music and I'm ready to jump back in with a whole new approach. We just booked a show at a place called Luigi's Fun garden-- a darn good start!
4. To spend quality time with my girlfriends, even those who live far away!
My first move is my Martin Luther King Jr. weekend date with my friend Tomi-- mission: movies and food. And I just saved up enough money for a plane ticket to Portland to visit Automne-- this time, no holiday parties, no playing shows, no me-running-in-and-running-out-and-gone. I just want to hang out, and of course have the first ever Spacemen She band practice!
5. To learn i-Movie!
There's a tutorial-- I just need to set a day aside!
6. To have a good laugh every day!
I forget, I really do. I have a sensitive nervous system and I get balled up so easily-- it's critical that I learn to unwind and laugh it off. At home right now is an Onion page-a-day calender and a Sarah Silverman DVD. I'm considering getting TV so we can watch John Stewart, but I'm on the fence about that one. We haven't had TV in 15 years! But the man just makes me pee my pants laughing... and he makes the awful headlines so darn funny.
7. To make healthy cooking a bigger part of our lives!
I fell off of the home-cooking wagon this year, due to a combination of being really busy and having a pre-made hot food section open up at our local Co-op. I really miss sneaking medicine into our food, and being in control of all of the ingredients (so I can avoid my allergies better, and also so I can make sure there are no fillers in my food!). I have already started to cook a lot more, and I hope the trend continues!
8. To continue to nurture my relationship with the Healing Plants in a way that is fun, meaningful, and satisfying to me!
Herbs, I'm talking about you! You'll be seeing blogs about my continuing journey in Herbalism. I realize that this is a lifelong study, and I need to tend to it like a long-term relationship. Which means serious discussions... AND date nights!
9. To find a way to get enough cardiovascular exercise and yoga into my life!
It's a New Year's cliche because it is a real challenge! It's even more challenging since moving to the country, believe it or not-- less classes, less well-lit paths to walk on after work in the winter, and of course ice and snow! But there are lots of new yoga classes right now, and new teachers, so I am going to give them the old exploratory try-- I want to get super strong and super flexible!
10. To write a handful of short stories this year!
You might not see them, and they might in fact be truly awful, but I vow to write them anyway! How else am I going to practice for the great Novel I plan to write at age 40?
11. To write a handful of songs and record them!
Same thing, you might not get to hear them, but I love the process, and I don't want "what others think" to ruin that for me. It's gotten a little harder since I started playing live-- now I look at things through the eyes of other people. I figure that's fine, I do want to write fun songs to play live, but if I want to pour my heart out and write terrible poetry to a soundtrack of flubbed finger-picking, I should be able to do that as well! (Art first! Public second!)
(If you're curious what I do, here's a link to my band, Sasha and the Shamrocks!)
Whew! That was a lot of resolutions, huh? In truth, I like to call them "goals", since everything is always changing and morphing into a new form... but I like the power of putting these goals out there!
I hope all your New Years dreams come true, and I look forward to dreaming together in 2009! What wonderful things will we come up with next?