I can never resist a blank slate.
All that lovely time and space to make things better in. I always get carried away and make far too many new year’s resolutions to ever keep up with.
This year, I decided to simplify. My new year’s resolution for 2012 can be summed up in the following thought I had while restless and frustrated one colicky morning:
live less on the surface of things.
It took me a little while to work out what I meant, but I’ve got it now. I want to spend more of my time doing things that matter. Life with a baby means pockets of time, not the acres of unbroken hours I envisioned. Thus far, I’ve been pretty awful at using my hour or two for something of significance. I fritter it. I fiddle, and ramble around on the internet doing pointless things. And before I know it, it’s time to feed again and I’m sat down for another hour. I’ve spent entire days, weeks even, doing nothing that means anything. Skimming on the surface. It’s not fulfilling. (I do, of course, know that baby feeding is something of significance – I can just do better with what surrounds it.)
‘Things that matter’ range from reading to Henry, to improving my writing, to visiting those I’m assigned and those I’m not, to getting back on the piano, to learning how to use my slow cooker, to putting away everything to talk to Timothy when he gets home, to doing some proper exercise, with baby in tow or not, and making my excitable way through these:
I just want to make more of my hours count for something. Because we’re all the sum of our parts, and I’d like to be made of a bit less Facebook. Doing things of significance makes you a person of significance, and that’s the end of it.
Go on. Ring out the old. Ring in the new. (Do you love that new year hymn? I do. I love it even more now I know it was written by Tennyson.) Take your blank slate and scribble all over it. January’s a good time for that sort of thing.
make a long story short 