Lots of people have been doing "year end review" or "what I plan for the new year."

Honestly, I don't do that. I don't find the end of the calendar year the best time for me to spend a lot of time musing about my life in the past year, or trying to set goals for the new one: it's dark, it's cold (well, in MOST of the country it's cold. Here, my allergies are just bad), the holidays are over, all the pretty glittery spangly things have been taken down and put away, it's time to buckle back down to work. There's limited amounts of "specialness" for at least a month, and even then, the "specialness" is Valentine's Day (which I really do not celebrate) or my birthday (which, with each year I get older, I feel less and less like celebrating). Thinking about how little I got done, in comparison to what I wanted to do, or thinking about "how I can improve in the future" just depresses me right now.

Because, frankly, a lot of the time I'm doing my flat best. And as many times as my mother reminded me growing up that no one (least of all myself) should expect me to do better than my best, I really do. I fear sometimes that my "best" is only as good as some other people's "half-assed."

So I don't know. I'm not going to make pronouncements about how I will not buy any yarn this year until I use up what I have - because I know that doesn't work for me. The same with books and fabric. And the whole "I will publish more papers" thing also is frustrating and can come to grief, because in some cases, it's not up to me - it's dependent on co-author schedules, or the vagaries of the game that is scientific publication. I don't like setting myself up to fail, by saying "I'll have three papers published this year" and then finish the year out with two rejections and one still in review. Same with grants.

Healthwise, I don't know - I COULD do more, I could force myself to get out of bed six days a week rather than five at 5 am and work out for an hour. Or I could nag myself into doing exercise in the afternoons like I used to. I could give up meat. Or sugar. Or dairy. Or all three. Or I could just figure out the closest thing to Purina People Chow and throw out all of the food I have now, and live on the equivalent of Purina People Chow - because it would be boring, and generally you lose weight when you are bored with what you are eating. (THAT is the real diet secret: it's not the magic of grapefruit, or the wonder of not-eating-carbs, or some special quality to broiled fish and steamed vegetables. It's the fact that you get so blasted SICK of eating whatever it is mandated that you are allowed to eat, that you eat less. Of course, that's also why most people go off of diets, because that kind of joylessness is hard to take for long)

I guess what bothers me about a lot of resolutions - and the general IDEA of New Year's resolutions - is the idea of never being satisfied with yourself. That you're never just good enough as you are. And you know, that's something I've fought with since I can't remember - the idea that I'm not good enough as I am, that I don't do enough or work hard enough or am funny enough or well-read enough. That I don't write books, or design my own patterns, or contribute enough to the net creativity in the world. That I'm not an innovative enough scientist, that I don't love research enough, that I don't come up with earth-shattering questions or new procedures or anything like that. That I might as well not do ANYTHING, because nothing I do can live up to the people who are superstars at it. That I'm not the best at anything. And that's hard.

So I don't know.

Perhaps my best resolution that I could make, can be summed up in one word: Enjoy.
Worrying too much about whether I'm good enough probably actually limits me from being as good as I could be. Worrying about spending too much money on things is probably also not a valid worry; I've never gotten in financial trouble and I am more frugal, actually, than a lot of people I know. My health is good and even though I'm bigger than what society says is ok (and what a lot of doctors say is ok), there's probably no need to go on the Dean Ornish diet just yet. Or worrying excessively whether a blood clot is lurking somewhere or if there's something very wrong that I don't know about, those kind of things.