Note: For those new to this blog, my tangents usually have little or nothing to do with Richard Armitage. Just thought I would warn you in advance. But I like to post pictures of him as often as I can, so maybe there will be one at the end.
I have this quirk in my nature that always wants to buck the system when I sense the “system” (whatever it may be) is all about form and not really about any meaningful function. The first time this obstinance manifested was in the first grade. One Friday the teacher asked me to go to the blackboard to write something so I could learn along with the others, and I said, “I don’t have to go to the blackboard.” She arched a brow and looked over her glasses at me, and said, “What do you mean?” I replied, “It’s Friday, and my mother said I don’t have to go to the blackboard on Fridays.” I was quickly reprimanded and taken to the hallway where she grabbed my chin and with her other hand, dug her fingernail into the top of my head while she told me how much trouble I was in. The following week my parents met with her, and I got my backside blistered by dad when he got home. I got a lecture too about how it was wrong to co-opt the idea from our Catholic neighbors who didn’t eat meat on Fridays. All I knew is there was no need for me to go to the board. I already knew what the teacher was talking about.
None of this is to say that I’m generally obstinate. I just don’t like doing things expected of me which don’t appear to have any benefit, to anyone. Yeah, it sounds arrogant and selfish, but how many of us hate doing things that are a waste but do them anyway? C’mon, I know some of you do things like this, but you do them because someone, somewhere expects it. And you hate it. We’ve all done it. But as I get older, I find I’m going back to my six year old self. I don’t want to squander time on things that really don’t count no matter how good they might make me look. So where am I going with this? Well, I felt a little bit of a pull to do the requisite New Year’s write-up/recap thang on the blog, and I was not excited about that at all. So I didn’t do one. :D I simply enjoyed the wonderful pieces done by others.
However, you’re not getting off the hook before I wax on about my objection to New Year’s resolutions, and yes, I know I’m not the first one to say this nor will I be the last. But people like me need to keep saying it until a few of you get it! LOL! New Year’s resolutions for most of us are a waste of time. I mean who keeps those things — if they even remember them after a couple of months? I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who kept a New Year’s resolution. No, that’s not true. I have known one person who did, and she talked about it incessantly, which was the result of being shocked that she kept it. No, I believe most and probably darn near all people don’t keep them. Or maybe I just run with a slothful crowd.
Obviously, I think my crowd is in the majority, so here I am talking to you about something that is so unnecessary and usually just leads to guilt. Yep, it’s a setup for failure. I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t need any help with feeling like a failure, and several years ago I resolved :D to stop making resolutions because of that feeling. There are so many deadlines to meet in life, and I don’t need to create another one for myself especially when it only facilitates self-flagellation. Of course there is that minority who keeps resolutions, and if you are one of those people, and it makes you feel good, I’m sincerely happy for you. My slothful self will continue to refrain.
However, I do want to make it clear that I completely understand the need to make New Year’s resolutions, the need to wipe the slate clean and start over, the need to have another chance at making something right or attaining something we long for. That need is so great among us, that when a year comes to an end and a new ones starts, and we’re quite naturally taking stock of our lives, it seems fitting to cobble together something that sounds important for us to do, something that sounds like a great destiny. But may I submit to you that you don’t have to start on January 1, and that may be the worst date to do it for some of us. So make up your own day for starting over, and hey, it really can be every morning. Frankly, if I didn’t start over at least once a week and sometimes daily, I think I would never want to talk to anyone or leave my house, and I’ve been there before. Not fun. So it’s Monday after the holiday, and the day didn’t get started all that well. I may need to start the year over on the 4th.
If anyone reading still wants a goal to sink their teeth into for this year, I did find a neat blog entry about losing weight (love the name of the site). It’s not a panacea, and I don’t agree with everything, but there is some common sense, and I kept nodding my head while I was reading. Surely some people will poke holes in this guy’s take on losing weight, but my testimony, if you will, is that this guy is right on for people like me, and I have lost weight exactly as he’s speaking of it, and I’m still losing, and it’s been almost painless (Phew. That sentence surely tops my record for length). And my friends, I love food. I love to cook, and like Nigella Lawson, I’m an eater. Oh yeah, I’m an eater.
End of sermonette. :D
A picture of RA as sort of promised:
Yeah, I know you understand what I’m saying, Rich.
Screencap courtesy of my stash.
Post script: My mother just reminded me that the first time my obstinate nature clashed with a teacher was actually in kindergarten. The class was learning to print their names. My name ends in an ‘A’, and I’ve always hated the look of a lower case ‘a’, and when it was on the end of my name, it didn’t look finished. So when I printed my name, I ended it with a small sized capital ‘A’, and I still print it that way today. (Yes, I know it’s harder to write. :D). When the teacher came by to check my paper, she said, “No, honey, you must write it like this — ‘a’. I just nodded and then kept writing it with a capital ‘A’. The teacher got so flustered with me that she actually screamed at me and ripped up my paper in several pieces. She gave me another paper, but I still proceeded to write with an ‘A’ on the end. She finally called my mother, who met with her that afternoon. The teacher told her I was developmentally delayed (or whatever pc language teachers used back then to say a kid was slow mentally). Mother was devastated and went home in tears. When my dad came home from work, he quizzed her about her upset, and she told him what the teacher had said and how she wasn’t sure what to think. To which good ol’ dad said, “Oh, that’s horseshit. The kid can write in cursive for cryin’ out loud.”
