Present- to be, to give, to live in now

I gave up on New Year’s resolutions a while ago.  The hype annoyed me and I know that if I try to pressure myself into doing something (or, worse, have someone else pressure me), I’ll just flip my finger and walk away quietly– I work great under pressure, but could never convince myself that this time of year was worth the pressure. 

Moreover, I hate failure. Hate it.  I’m recovering from a life of evaluating opportunities (and deciding against them) based on the probability of me “winning”.  (See sports, anything music-related, a few relationships, talent shows, karaoke, a church plant with this friend in Minneapolis, the philosophy major my professor friend was pushing me for (in fairness, he was mostly concerned that I would lose my intelligence and niceness if I followed through on plans to attend Conservative Bible College), dance, trivia games, pool with people who look like they know what they’re doing, etc.)  This resolution business seemed full of people trying things and failing at those things, and I decided to just quietly exit myself from the game before someone tagged me out.      

Then, some 18 months ago, I discovered Alece’s blog… she was the reason I made a “top ten blogs you have to read” list I give to friends, and is probably one of two of  the originals to still be on there.  Alece has this whole community of people  who do this “one word” thing– finding one word to focus on during the year.  I journaled through my experience with last year’s redemption and plan to move this year’s word actually to the blog (*gasp). 

This year, I’m choosing present.  I like it because it’s about being and about offering and about the now, which are things I really want to focus on this year.  I want to be with my family and with my friends and with the strangers on the train.  And I want to offer myself in whatever role I can in however brief our interaction.  I’m sick of being distracted and of not giving myself completely to people… of not being completely exhausted from living hard all day.   And hey– if 2012 is going to kill us all, might as well be fully here to enjoy it.