Adjustments

In the last two weeks, my life has turned upside-down. It all started when I ended my 3+ year relationship. You see, this was my first ever break up (aside from a week and a half "break" a few months ago), and I guess I didn't realize how it would affect every aspect of my life. So these past couple weeks, I've been adjusting to my new lifestyle.

First of all, there was the obvious adjustment. I had to get used to not talking to him, not knowing what was going on in his daily life, and not sharing what was going on in mine. Especially since we were feeling the same kind of pain, it sucked not being able to sympathize with him.

Call me crazy, but when I'm feeling down, I tend to rely on my strongest support systems to build me back up from nothing. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed. Most of my family and closest friends provided little support, if any, and that might have hurt even more than the initial break up.

Luckily, I did have friends come out of the woodwork that were there for me when no one else was, and one of my ex's and my mutual friends even reached out to me after a week or so. The people who did provide support were the ones I didn't expect to, and the people who didn't support me were the ones I needed most.

While it's going to take far longer than 2 weeks to overcome such a change in my life (while still balancing a nursing program that is getting exponentially more difficult and a new promotion at my job), I'm finally realizing who I can count on and who I lost.

I guess I learned the hard way that when you break up with someone, you lose more than just one person.

Clean slate

I love the idea that a new year means the decisions made during the past year can be wiped away and forgotten so that only new, better decisions can be made instead. While we all know that this isn't true in life and that many decisions can haunt you for the rest of your life, the whole idea makes people try (for at least a little bit) to be better people than they were. I don't usually like making resolutions that I know I can't keep. When I was a kid, I resolved to stop biting my nails every year, and by January 15, I was gnawing away again. Last year I made the resolution to stop texting while driving, which lasted until about May (a record for me!). This semi-success encouraged me to try this out again this year (so far, so good). But mostly, I just want to be slightly better in life than I was last year. I don't have many measurable goals, but concrete ideas to help me achieve this. So aside from my no-texting-while-driving resolution, here are my other ideas:

1) Make a decision, and stick to it. I've found myself going back and forth on a lot. Big things, little things, I just can't make up my mind sometimes. I'm realizing now that my "analysis paralysis" is holding me back from actually enjoying my life because I'm too worried about what the repercussions will be. So I need to figure out a way to feel confident in my decisions and stick to them.

2) Laugh/smile more. It sounds stupid, and I'm generally a happy person, but I've heard that smiling even when you aren't genuinely happy releases dopamine in the brain which actually makes you feel happy. It's like you're tricking yourself into being happy by "faking it." With my busy lifestyle, it's important to find joy in the little things, so that's what I'm going to focus on.

3) Give more. I believe in Karma, and giving makes me happy. Whether it's time, money, kind words, or something else entirely, the act of giving simply out of kindness and not reciprocation is rare in this world. I want to show random acts of kindness through giving what I can to the community and my loved ones.


So that's my 2011 plan.

Happy new year!