I read an article on the New York Times website today extolling the virtues of living a healthy and productive life. It argued, if you want to live better you need to do things, have friends, be in love, eat right, and stay positive. I’m doing one of the vaunted list. I ought to try for the trifecta.
There are a ton of mental positives happening in my brainpan. Whenever I see someone who is fit, my first instinct is to want to exercise. I eat less and I eat better food on the whole. I am finding ways to balance my time. There are things in the universe I want to do and I am doing some of them. Still, the overall state of my life feels like a holding pattern. This is no more apparent than on the holidays.
I spend my holidays waiting to see what everyone else wants and is doing. Rarely do I surge forward to find my own space and place in things. I’m going to take this Christmas through New Year stretch to reflect on that–as I should’ve done since Thanksgiving.
I’ll hold on to these thoughts and use them as the kindling for what I create next year.
Some Thoughts:
- Here’s the real of it all: It is not healthy to be alone on the holidays. Not because the days themselves are in any way magical, but because the social phenomena of those days only exacerbates their importance, and conversely, your isolation. Moreover, if you do have someone who loves you and they don’t try to find a way to spend time with you on those days they know matter, then they don’t recognize how much it matters or it doesn’t matter enough to them how you feel about the isolation. Either way, its a red flag.
- It took me a while to figure out what I did, but I did. I realize now that I sent my sister a straight up christmas card… She’s jewish.