2025 Resolution Word(s)

Are you a resolution maker or use the shortened version of choosing a resolution word? I've settled into the latter and often have my next year's word chosen a month or two before it goes into effect. Not this year. It was well into December before I settled on my choice for 2025, actually two sets of two words. They mirror how I felt 2024 had gone and how I didn't want 2025 to go. I'll reveal them in a bit but first, here is the last of the trinket bowls, made hastily on New Year's Day because I'd be seeing the recipient the following day for my regular cut and style. I had plenty of time to make it, but kept putting it off as I so often do with tasks until I was nearly out of time.

My stylist is always interested in my creative ventures, so at my previous appointment, I'd told her about the trinket bowls I'd been making and found it a little difficult to explain what they were and my process. Right then and there I decided I should make her one. She is an avid hunter, her husband hunts too but is also a game taxidermist, and they've even gone on safari in Africa. So I pulled out some leopard and tiger fabric that had come from friend Judi's stash to make this. She immediately said, "This will be perfect for all my rings!" then sent me a photo of it in use. She added that most of them had been gifted to her by another crafty client who makes them. I feel like she herself is quite the hair artist, mine being no trick to keep in check and her personality draws people to her. I'm not surprised that clients often gift her their work as I have.

But I digress. I realized that I'd spent a lot of last year in this same cycle of putting off getting to things or finishing things I'd started, even things that I wanted to do or had gotten excited about. My mental state was one of resisting, and if I could just get past the "I don't want to . . ." quarrel going on in my head, I was fine and getting things done. But I often didn't win.

Sleeves set in but still dragging my feet about sewing up the sides

So why was I resisting so much? To be honest, it may have started with tipping over into my seventh decade, which believe me I wanted to resist. I think I spent much of the year in a funk over it, coupled with a long slog getting my thyroid back in balance which eventually vanquished side effects of anxiety, depression, difficulty sleeping and fatigue. I started having more issues focusing my eyes which is due to dry eye syndrome which started up a few years back, part of my on-going auto-immune syndrome. The pain in my thumb-joints and cramping fingers worsened, making me think twice about picking up knitting needles or needle and thread to sew the pieces of this wool sweater together. I stare at it each evening when I settle in to watch tv, but fear gripping that needle will set off the cramping and the pain keeps me from picking it up. (However, I'm experimenting with compression gloves of two varieties and they may be helping.) Frankly, I grew tired of the constant monitoring of my various ailments and the daily/weekly routines and medication necessary to keep everything in check. Moody and biligerant about these things I could not ignore but wished I could.

That's the other thing I've realized in looking back over my behavior last year. A lot of the resistance was also driven by fear: fear of pain, or not having the stamina to make a longer drive or hike a trail longer than my daily walk, even still lingering pandemic fear of participating in anything involving crowds.  And too much of it driven by the whine of that petulant child in my head. I knew all this fear and resistance was making my world smaller and was having a hard time caring.

But hey! Something reversed after Thanksgiving. I suddenly started feeling physically much better which may be why my attitude uplifted, became brighter. I suddenly did not dread the coming year as another marker of my waning time on this earth but felt I'd have the energy to do more and see more, and really want to. I would take up my resolution word more as a mantra:

RESIST LESS/FEAR LESS

I think this will serve me well, and I pray this looking-forward-to-the-new-year optimism and better health stays with me! This quotation from Rilke is a perfect reminder of what a new year can mean:

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”

As for last year's word - organize - It didn't help as much as I had hoped in getting me more productive, what with all this resistance in the background. Initially it was good to get the decks cleared and a lot of stuff organized and put away. But organizing is a lot like housework: it is never one and done but something you have to keep doing as new items enter the studio and projects leave messes in their wake. Plus there's always that issue of organizing so well that you suddenly can't find something you know you have somewhere, if you could only retrace your logic to find it. Plus, my muse apparently took off with both boxes of Posca Pens which I realized a few months ago were nowhere in sight, my last memory of one set on the work table and the other on the floor next to some paint I'd been journaling with.. She must be holding them hostage until I get back to my art journaling . . .

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Previous Resolution Word Posts:

• 2008 - Freedom
  2009 - Calm
  2010 - Focus
  2011 - Refocus
  2012 - Balance & Harmony
  2013 - Perseverance
  2014 - Explore
  2015 - Fearless
  2016 - Light
  2017 - Endure 
  2018 - Refresh
  
  2019 - Wing It!  
  2020 - Go! 
  2021 - Finish 
  2022 - More 
  2023 - Continue
  2024 - Organize