Happy New Year!

It’s obviously been awhile since I’ve posted.   And the problem with not writing for a while is the same problem as anything else you like to do that is good for you, but is also lots of work:  the longer you stay away from it, the more difficult it is to start up again.

But, I’ll tell you this much.  I had a great time while I wasn’t writing.

I had a very relaxing Christmas with my family.  We took a road trip to Florida and hung out and did all kinds of  fun stuff while we were there.  All our worries, and troubles were left behind.

All too soon, of course, I found myself back wading through waist-high piles of laundry, and sorting through endless emails and junk mail.  Hard as I tried to stay in the frame of mind from that vacation, it didn’t take long to feel overwhelmed by life’s chores and duties.   There was a scene from Finding Nemo  that kept playing through my mind.  (Probably because we played it in the car about four different times in both of our 17 hour drives).  You know the scene where Marlin and Dory are all caught up in the peaceful feeling of staring at the phosphorescence emitted from the angler fish that’s luring them closer, until finally Marlin notices (almost too late) that the light that’s making them feel so good is coming from a fish that is about to devour them and he says, “Good feeling gone!”?

Yep.  That’s about how I felt:   good feeling gone.

I was back to making list after list of chores that needed to be finished.  Volunteer work that needed to be completed.  Kids appointments and activity arrangements.  Errands that needed to be done.  Odds and ends that needed to be completed around the house, and of course, the then looming task of coming up with some resolutions for the New Year.

Buried under all these lists and plans, I thought back to the last day of our trip.  On that day, we were going to spend the day at Busch Gardens in Tampa and I was determined to plan and plot out the day, so we could get all the things we (mostly me) wanted to see and do crossed off the TO DO list before we had to return home.  So I was marking maps and taking surveys from the family wanting to know everybody’s TOP 3 THINGS THEY WANT TO SEE AND DO AT BUSCH GARDENS.  And I tried to plan them out.  Then, I panicked with the realization that there were eight of us on this trip and that would result in 24 things to see and do in one day with a wide area of interests since we ranged in age from 7 – 66.  So, I went back to the drawing board, and re-surveyed everybody asking them OF THEIR TOP THREE THINGS THEY WANTED TO SEE AND DO AT BUSCH GARDENS WHAT IS THEIR NUMBER 1?

That was better.  It narrowed our list to only 8 things to HAVE to do, which felt much more doable.  Then, I only needed to plan out lunch times, and locations, times of some of the things that were scheduled events people wanted to see/do, etc.

Even in that moment I could feel myself beginning to go a little crazy with the need to control and plan and plot our move down to every last detail, but it will all be worth it, I told myself.

That’s when my brother, who is every bit as prone to nervousness and worry about controlling time as a Zen monk in deep meditation,  piped up and said, “How about we not plan anything and just go to the park and see what happens?”

I looked at him confused.

What was he suggesting, exactly?  That we just show up haphazard and leave a day at an amusement park to chance?

I thought about it a bit.  If we did that, it would certainly mean I could just “stand down” the rest of that evening.  I wouldn’t have to do anything else but go to bed, wake up the next morning and head out the door to the park.  (Well, I am a mother of three, so it’s not quite THAT easy, but you know what I mean).  It was certainly a different approach than anything I was used to.

So (with some reluctance) I agreed and that’s what we did.  Left our day to chance.

And you know what?  We ended up getting into a really short line for a big roller coaster, and we saw an animal theater show that hadn’t made it onto ANY of our LISTS OF THINGS TO DO AND SEE, but we all agreed afterwards it was a highlight of the whole day.  We also ended up walking past a BBQ chicken stand right as it opened, so we were at the front of the line that quickly grew longer behind us.

Whaddya know?  I had to ask myself at the end of that day, maybe NOT planning isn’t such a bad thing after all. 

But still, I thought as I starting organizing and listing all the things that I was resolving I would do and get right this year, that was vacation.  REAL LIFE doesn’t work that way.  If you want to change, you need to plan.

Clearly, I hadn’t yet learned the breadth of the genius lifestyle my brother has always known.

Suddenly as I began listing improvements in the sixth area of my life (yes, six areas, one per page with 12 points to work on in each area, one for each month…makes sense, right? :))  that I was resolving to improve in the coming year, I realized I  was growing so tired from the list, I was pretty sure I’d not even have the energy to ring in a New Year let alone make changes in one.  Overwhelmed yet again, my brother’s words came back to me.  “How about we just show up and see what happens?”

But this isn’t a vacation, I thought.  This is LIFE.  There’s a difference.

Then I thought of my brother, who, in the best possible way has made his entire LIFE a vacation.

That’s when I realized that maybe vacation isn’t really a trip you take to get away from everything, but rather, a state of mind.

I know I’m still a long way from being able to approach life with the same kind of open-ended questions as my brother, but I can make an effort to try it out more often.  And around the same time I was thinking that, is when this little  word popped into my head:

SIMPLIFY

And I began to think, what if I only made ONE resolution for this year…and it was this word ?   Could it work?   Would I get results?

I have no idea.  But, I’m sure if I asked my brother he’d say, “Let’s find out.”

So, I am.

And with that,  I give you my entire list of resolutions for 2013:  Simplify.

I hope you’ll join me!