A few days ago
![[info]](http://www.backup.susantaylorbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
had an interesting post (which she often does) about chosing a theme for the year. It stuck with me but I wasn’t sure what the right theme would be for me. I often push myself to write where it hurts and go deep. I try to lose control (though I pretty much stink at it.)
This time off work has given me a lot of opportunity for self-reflection (some might say too much.) I want to be a better writer than I was the year before. More importantly, I want to be a better person.
I was talking about this desire with a close friend who knows me very well and she pointed out that I can often have a bleak outlook or send out downer, depressing vibes. And I admit that sometimes, yes, that’s all I can feel. I struggle with family members in great need (that I can’t help with) and I struggle with my own health issues, but as this friend pointed out, there are people who are as low as can possibly be, who have absolutely no reason to be happy and yet they are still very positive people. Of course there is the opposite as well, people who have no problems (or not huge ones) and have every reason to be happy yet they go around all gloom and doom and depressed.
She said, “It’s almost as though you’re afraid to be happy.” Ouch. So keeping that in mind as well as trying to step a bit outside my introverted zone, my theme for 2008 is to REACH OUT WITH JOY.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Ouch! Smack that friend for being so honest and then give her a hug.
As an introvert myself, I find that my closest friends are the ones who are neither more positive more negative to me — I feel pretty much the same when I get off the phone with them as when I got on, instead of drained. And I aim to be that sort of person in real life too. You know, if I can’t emit a positive vibe, at the very least, I won’t rob someone else of theirs. Hm, this is beginning to sound like the hippocratic oath.
Reach out with joy. I love that. Both the reaching and the joy part.
I also love how everyone’s picking a theme this year, and I was inspired by Laura’s post, too. Here’s to 2008, the Year of the Theme!
Excellent goal! 🙂
I hope we can get together soon! Are we on for the 22nd?
Happy New Year!
I think we all have different personalities, and I’m on the bluesy, sensitive side – it both works for me and doesn’t work for me. It takes friends like yours to keep me in balance.
I love your theme – just keep your essential self there!
Wishing you a joyful 2008, Susan.
What a lovely theme, Susan. Just choosing it is an act of beauty!
And thanks for the nice words:>)
Happy New Year!
Laura
Oh, Susan. The gorgeousness of that last stanza.
A struggle to get there, I know. But I felt with you all the way.