I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not sure why. My guess is it may have something to do with the fact that I’m simply a shite long-term planner, a failing grossly impacted by the fact that I just care a lot less about the future than about the present.
But I decided a few weeks ago that I need to do it for 2010. I turn 40 in a few short months. I tend to give birthdays about as much weight as I give other holidays (which is to say, pretty much one), and have yet to have any milestone birthdays actually feel like milestones. I have a feeling, though, that this one may actually feel like a milestone. I’ve had a lot of changes in the last few years, know there are some to come in the next, and there are some ways I’ve come full circle in my life of late, too. Making resolutions this time feels like a way of acknowledging all of that and also perhaps better, more consciously, putting my life in a better framework for it.
1. Accept and embrace my place in the world. When I say that, what I’m mostly talking about is the fact that there simply is little place for me in the mainstream, especially when it comes to my work. It’s not like I’ve ever tried that hard to fit in, but at the same time, I feel like over the last few years, I also haven’t fully accepted that and then just really been who I am, without feeling like I should at least try to play the game.
For example, I really don’t see Scarleteen ever getting something like a fat Ford Foundation grant, no matter how many more millions I serve, what happens with abstinence-only funding and culture or who is President at a given time. Our world and culture overwhelmingly getting on board with sex-positive approaches to young adult sexuality and sex ed is just not going to happen anytime soon. And I’m just not Ford Foundation people. I’m also not TV people: I didn’t forget that, thankfully, and said no to TV a couple times this year. I have no interest in being TV people. Ever.
Beyond the way something like doing television or getting a huge grant from a mainstream foundation could help fund and support the work I want to do and feel is important, I don’t think I ever wanted to be that kind of people. There’s a limitation in those things I don’t like. Being on the margins allows me to best address the margins and to do so in a way where I don’t have to capitulate to anyone or have anyone have the ability to control what I do or say. I still think that benefit is worth the cost of it.
I’ve been more cautious than I really need to be with my work at Scarleteen, the other work I do related to or like it, and also with my other work, like my photographic and written work here, where I write and publish elsewhere. (I know that to some, it probably doesn’t look anything like caution, and if that’s so, then you perhaps don’t realize I’m weirder than you think I am. I appreciate your mistaken impression, if that’s so.) Some of that caution is sound, is about things that are vital like good boundaries, like understanding that I’m modeling attitudes and behavior for people, particularly young people, and because building bridges is important. So is having some vague semblance of privacy.
On the other hand, some of that caution has been based in fear or weariness. Fear of being stalked again, of being harassed, of being driven out of town with sticks. Fear of going totally broke. Fear of failure. Weariness with fighting the good fight, with paying the harder costs of transparency, with having my freak flag sometimes flying right out there in the open where everyone can see it and may or will dissect it.
When I started doing all of this work, I was more fearless. Mind, I had way less eyes on me and what I do then, and I was younger, but I can still be more fearless, those things notwithstanding (in fact, a compelling argument could be made that . I hit, spoke, expressed myself from the gut more. I miss that about me. I want it back.
2. Get better organized. If you have never lived with me or shared my space, what you don’t know is that I may well be the most disorganized individual on the planet.
I’m very organized in my head. I’m an utter mess outside of it.
And at the present time, I am living with an exceptionally good organizer, who’s already made it far easier to keep the things I do actually have somewhat organized in place. I could, and with no shortage of gratitude from anyone who interacts with me in any way, take very good advantage of Blue’s unlimited and well-honed skills in this department to refine my own.
Of course, this includes doing some actual long-term planning. Sigh. But I can do this. I can.
3. Choose my battles wisely. At the moment, I have a couple half-written, already lengthy screeds about individuals who have driven me up a freaking tree. Whether it’s about penning a book in which they effectively called me a slut who has no call educating young people, about someone faking their credentials and identity and hoodwinking young people who can make my own, real work by a real person harder for a while, or about a partner’s utterly full-of-shit ex-lover manipulating the crap out of me for what appeared to be either entertainment or pathos (or both), I got ire and it’s got words.
Going back to resolution number one up there, to the way I live my life, to the work I do, there is never going to be any escaping this. There are always going to be people like this. They are always going to hurt my feelings or make my life harder or less happy, and they are always going to care very little about that.
Some battles are worth fighting. Slander or libel matter, for instance, especially if they threaten my livelihood and my craft. Harassment matters, because one does need to refuse to be harassed to the degree they can. Muckracking is important when it impacts others, even if it has a personal relevance to me. Too, I’ve had some incidents in the last year where I just felt really taken for granted by some folks, and I started figuring out that rather than sitting and stewing, it was best for me to just call some people out and ask for what I feel I deserve, which has been working very well. Especially when I carefully consider if I need to do that or not.
What amount of heart and mind I invest into this stuff, and who I devote any kind of time to also matters. Some of this keeps me from actually doing the work I want to do, from living the life I want to live, and can result in certain individuals or groups accomplishing exactly what they set out to accomplish, which is pissing me off, complicating my life or making me feel like garbage. Some of it is simply not going to be a sound or productive use of my energy.
I think with this one, I need to learn to err on the side of arrogance. I need to get a little high-and-mighty and decree that more often than not, some of these folks are just not worthy of even a minute of my time.
4. And on that note, I also get to take my time with things. As much time as I feel I need to. I think because often so much of my work is crisis-based, I can become forgetful about the fact that not only does everything not need a rushed and immediate reply, but that some things are best left to marinate before a response or an action. If something feels like it has to be said or expressed immediately, or that it should be, but I feel like I want to sit on it for a while, I need to give myself full permission to do just that. The world can wait. Lord knows I’ve waited on it enough.
5. Less work, more play. This is a tricky one, of course, because I don’t make the kind of living that allows me a lot of leisure time. At the same time, when I overwork, I don’t usually get paid any more than I would if I didn’t.
I know I’ve talked about needing to do this before, and I frequently fail. I think there are some things I need to do that are supportive of this goal. Trusting that there are others who share my work and activism goals who are working just as hard at them would help. Reminding myself that part of my ethos and philosophy as an educator is to be supportive and to provide guidance, but not to do too much hand-holding and to encourage people to hold their own space and be proactive, also helpful. Getting better at delegating — which also involves accepting that no, that will sometimes mean things won’t get done exactly as I’d like them to be done, but that’s fine — would be a huge help. Bearing in mind that if I burn out utterly, I’m of use to know one. I may even need to put a note on every wall that reminds me that even if I somehow manage the impossible miracle of helping everyone else have a life they enjoy, if I can’t manage that for myself, it’s no good. Bad teacher, no biscuit.
So, at the very least, this means that every week, I must take at least one full day off. Totally off. I’m also going to make a promise to myself that since I usually start my workday around 7 AM, at 7 PM work needs to be over, whether I’m finished with things or not. If I start later, same deal: workdays must stop at 12 hours, without question. And the Staycation I took last year? I need at least one weekish-long break like that every year, at a minimum. That was one of the best things I had done for myself in a long time, and I’m a moron for not having done it sooner.
All of this also involves…
6. Letting go of childish things. Not the good stuff: the good stuff stays. I’m talking about the bad stuff. About the standards I was often held to as a child which were not reasonable then and still aren’t now. About the idea that I have to work harder and longer than anyone else in order to be worthy of living a life at all, worthy of the basic things we are all worthy of even if we don’t do anything with our lives anyone thinks is of note. The hurt, the ugly little voices that say ugly things, the mistakes I made and wished I didn’t, but which I have long since apologized for. The things I was assigned — or self-assigned — responsibility for when I shouldn’t have been.
And that also means I need to…
7. Hold myself to lower standards. My perfectionism can reach truly crazy epic proportions sometimes, and over the years, it just keeps getting worse. Heck, even with this journal, the entries are less frequent because I somehow got it in my head that I had to say things here of Great Relevance, instead of also just taking a few minutes to add silly, potentially irrelevant parts of my daily life, which is supposed to be what a journal is really for in the first place. It’s a journal: it’s not a book, it’s not a commissioned article, it’s not going to be up for a Pulitzer, for crying out loud.
My new mantra needs to be something like, “No, you don’t have to do it better than anyone else. Sometimes, you don’t need to even do it at all.” It might also be helpful if I actually remembered now and then that I’ve accomplished more than just a little in my life so far, and with less resources than most: I’ve already pretty much exceeded everyone else’s expectations of me, which were mighty high, so it’s past time I give myself the props and the leeway other people do.
8. Have the birthday party I always wanted. I mean, for real, I’m turning 40. 40! I’ve well bypassed the age I thought I was going to live until when I was a teenager, and given a lot of my life, that’s no small feat. There must, at the very least, be rollerskating.
9. Take care of myself just as well as I take care of everyone else. If you’re a helper-person or know and love helper-people, you know how we are. We’re sure everyone else’s care is more important and immediate than our own self-care, even when the people around us notice this brand of dysfunction and call us out on it. In fact, we can sometimes even come back to those call-outs with this inane and irritating little game where we basically make a Sally Struthers-esque plea for those we feel so need more care than we do. And we’ll say that from our sickbed, we’ll say that when the bills go unpaid, we’ll say that when we are clearly about to literally drop from putting everyone else first.
Must. Stop. This. And if I tell you I’m fine when I really, truly do not look or sound fine, please call me out on my bullshit.
10. Remember that I’m allowed to be as happy as I want to be and don’t have to keep secrets about that from anyone. This is a new issue for me. I’ve generally been pretty effusive about all my interpersonal relationships in my writing and with the people in my life, and very open about my feelings about them. But there’s something right now about being back with Blue again that makes me worry that if I express certain things I’m feeling with this, and what our life back together has been like, it will make all of my other relationships seem like they were unimportant (when they very much were not). My concern about that isn’t just those other people reading this, but even readers making assumptions about what other people in my life meant to me. Which is probably pretty silly.
Mind, it’s a tricky balance regardless, because this is also a relationship I feel deeply protective about. I want more privacy in it than I have with other relationships. It’s not because it feels tenuous or insecure: strangely enough, for as volatile as some of our history has been, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as earnestly secure in something interpersonal in my whole life. It’s more like that it’s this miraculous thing that’s managed to weather so freaking much over the years, including in the long absences between times we were together or in contact, and so I think I worry that if I don’t guard it in some ways, there might be that one thing that somehow tips the balance. Maybe. We’ve also had troubles over the years with others being very threatened by or envious of the deep way we connect and the import we have for one another that have caused us some big hurt or giant frustrations, too, so I worry there’s more of that to come. And, of course, when all this started back up again, I had to keep a lid on it, so I may just need to remember that’s done now. I don’t know if those things are it either, though. Still trying to figure out what my feelings on this are coming from, really.
All that said, I get to express my joy. I should be expressing my joy, because it is miraculous and it is exceptional and it is also a relationship which has been part of who I am since I was 19 years old. It was some part of every relationship since because it was a part of me. What I feel and have now doesn’t change what I felt or had for others before. Intellectually, I know this: I just need to connect my head with my heart. And bear in mind that resolutions 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 will probably help.
…and for the bonus round: I am giving myself greater permission to BOTH tell people who I’m feeling love for that I love them madly, and to tell people who are being complete and utter assholes to fuck the hell right off. So, whatever side of that coin you’re on, look out. 
P.S. I love you wonderful silly people who have been reading me for an age madly. A happy 2010 to the lot of you.
