New Years Resolutions

I like to make New Years Resolutions, but I haven't really made any this year, or at least I haven't made any that coincided with the new year. I like resolutions in general. In junior high, I was told that Benjamin Franklin made a resolution to improve himself all the time working on one thing each week, and I took that to heart. I'm working on something to improve myself at all times. One of the things that you will find in common between most of my friends, who are so different in so many other ways, is that they are what I call strivers and that they too are not complacent in who they are. It is one of the many things that I love about my husband.

One of the things that I continually have to work on my entire life is my interpersonal skills (a word I have picked up from Nick Jr.). I have no instinct for social skills. I work on them all the time and as time progresses it is harder and harder for me to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Another nice thing about P is that he is good at helping me identify these gaps.

One of the things that I've been working on more recently is not being an intellectual bully. I have this propensity when I'm angry (especially when I'm feeling indignant) to speak faster and raise the level of my vocabulary, especially with my bosses. It's not an especially endearing trait and it isn't something that I do consciously. It is a remnant of growing up in a dis-functional family where my dad was abusive in almost every way and my only defense was my mouth.

If you look at me at any point in my life with an open eye, you will find that I am a different, and hopefully better, person that I was the year prior, and hopefully even six months prior. Everyone in my family, with the possible exception of my dad, benefited greatly from my parents getting a divorce. I feel that I benefited the most, and the benefit that I appreciate the most is that with the new family dynamic my mother and sisters look at me as differently than they did growing up. For the most part, they see me as closer to who I am than as the collection of who I was growing up. It seems to me that most people have their position in the family where they fit and have a really hard time removing themselves from that spot, if it is even possible. Although I am lucky that I'm not in the spot I was growing up, I do wish that they would see that I'm not the same person that made the same mistakes two decades ago, a decade ago, or even a year ago. I invite them and you to see the person I am today and the person I am tomorrow.