Resolution

There’s a common theme, I’ve noticed, regarding this past year, from online editorials to the front page of the local New York papers. Something to the effect of, oh, 2008: Good Riddance!

I agree. 2008 sucked.

But not completely. There were two high points for me and my family. First was, of course, the birth of my second daughter in September. She’s three-and-a-half months now, chunking up, developing a personality, and sleeping through the night, thank God.

The other was my heart procedure way back at the end of March. It was the second and last attempt to cure me of atrial fibrillation, and the fears of sudden random stroke. And it did. That Damoclean sword has been out of my life for nine months now, not completely, mind you (the utterly inexplicable reason why I developed it still makes me afeared of getting it again), but I can sleep a li’l bit easier at night.

Everything else did not go quite as planned.

You don’t want to hear me whine, I’m sure, but I’m not writing this entirely for you. I’m trying to work something out here, so bear with me.

That vague bogeyman, stress, has been my constant companion this past year. What do I mean by that? It’s a catch-all I guess, and the product of lazy thinking. So as of right now, 10:21 am on January 1st, 2009, I will not ever use that word.

Ah. I feel much better already.

For better or worse, I segment my life into the following compartments: health, work, family, and my dreams of what I want my health, work, and family to be. Needless to say there’s quite a disparity between the first and second groupings.

My health is not optimum. By ‘health,’ I’m talking about such things as: those consistent thoughts floating in the stormy sea between my ears, the quality and quantity of sleep I average each night, the typical types of food I shove down my gullet each day, the usually poor ways my body responds to such foods, the exercise that I do or don’t do on a daily basis, and how my heart’s bopping along in my chest. The report card in this area is, simply, a D.

The problem – or blessing – about one’s health is that ‘health’ spills over intimately, foundationally, and holistically into all other areas of one’s life. If your health is suffering, so is your work, your familial relationships, and your dreams.

My work is an utter nightmare. I can’t go into details about it here and now, but it is the greatest source of pain in my life. Trust me, that ain’t hyperbole. The job used to enable me the freedom to do what I want outside of it, but as my life outside it grew exponentially, the job itself contracted and constricted like a boa around a lazy, dimwitted marsupial. Make sense? That’s about as far into it as I can go for now.

My family is wonderful, apart from the minor little irritations and frictions all families navigate through, but I can’t enjoy my girls to the fullest in poor health and in a toxic job. It’s that simple.

I don’t want the years to fly by, as they have (oh where did the past four years go!), trapped in such an existence.

What to do, what to do?

Egads! This is a situation tailor-made for New Years!

In December 2004, when my first daughter was just a few months old, I was extremely and uncharacteristically inspired. We had money back then, the house was new, the job wasn’t that bad. I was writing my short stories, one after the other, a new one every two or three weeks. The wonder of new fatherhood clothed me. So, inspiration abounded. As the new year approached, I began collecting and collating and categorizing as many wishes, dreams, and desires I could into goals, objectives, and plans. Problem was, it was a little too ambitious. Something of the order of almost 150 goals, big to small, practical to wild, daily habit-stuff to the lifestyle I wanted to be living when I was in my seventies.

I tend to go overboard when I’m inspired. Not that that’s such a bad thing. But here it didn’t serve me because …

I didn’t focus on one thing at a time.

Notice the title of this blog? Well, I wasn’t recovering back then.

So this time, I think, it has to be different, for my mental, physical, social, occupational, vocational, financial, younameit-al, health to rebound. It has to be different.

Ergo, one thing at a time.

Imagine that! One thing at a time. What a concept.

Today I’m gonna eat healthy. That’s all. I already had an apple and a banana, took an omega-3 and a magnesium pill for the ticker, and drank five glasses of water, tinged with the old lemon juice. For lunch I’m gonna make me some brown rice with grilled peppers (the others are having leftover meatloaf by choice), and for dinner we’re all having salmon and veggies. And making sure to leave three hours between meals for digestion so no backlogs occur.

Ah. I feel better already. I have a master plan, but it’s still in the tweaking phase. More thoughts to follow in the days ahead …