New Year Resolutions

I do these every year. The year I make the resolutions, they seldom come true. But if I persist, they find they're way to fruition in years after I've forgotten I've made them.

This year:

1)Back to watching what I'm eating. I've gained four inches around the belly since I've been back in the midwest. I could blame it on the lifestyles here, but I'm the one responsible. There's a lot of negative influences that waddle about leading me to believe that bad food is "good." But I have to resist and just tell them I don't agree and take care of myself in this department. But it's like being in the core of a dysfunctional family, you start adapting just to get along.

2) Take up the dobro and get some lessons.

3) Have to make some art. I've stopped being as creative since being here. There's something about the lifestyle here, the people, getting involved with a church - that's cut off my creativity. Not happy with what I'm building here completely. The church folk are so conformed. I think they know it too. They go through these rituals and uphold practices that are all a part of passing down a religion. I understand that. But it hardens a creative head. Recently, a priest tried to start an experimental service apart from the "regular" service. He asked me to play the music. I played interpretaions of the hymns. The congregation just can't do it. When they sang, it was at a conformed tempo and I had to conform to them on the spot. No deviation in tempo or interpretation allowed in their practices, perhaps in their lives. They held a service over the holidays where they held up cue cards that read, "Amen" at certain points - like a TV audience that's conformed to laughing at certain points, whether there's anything funny or not.

I can feel myself getting grey and I don't like it. Is that what Jesus wants?

4) Relationships - I still struggle with this one year after year after year. I think the struggle is with fantasy vs. reality and always has been. We live in an era of illusions and fantasies. It's very hard these days to really decipher what you're getting into with the facades people put on and parade around in. I have a tendency to become smitten with a fantasy and don't trust myself to make good choices in relationships. I've disappointed myself so often. It's not the other person's fault. I've hung clothes on them they had no intention of wearing most of time. Some are truly deceptive, mentally ill people. Most are completely innocent. But I need to open up a bit more and take more chances. Get over my own fantasies and see them for what they are and accept them, good and bad~~ both. For both is what people are and always have been. No one is enlightened, perfect creatures on this earth. They are human. And if they wish to be loved unconditionally, they have to accept that.
Being loved in an adult sense means being accepted both good and bad. Loved only for what is "good" is fantasy.

Thank God the master painters saw humans for what they were (are.) They showed us humans in an imperfect state and created beauty of it. Present society and media only show us humans in the perfect state of "celebrity." Hair combed,teeth white, perfectly dressed,perfectly thin, perfectly tanned, tailored, and conformed to what is acceptable. Perfectly boring in my book. Ever noticed how many times people say "perfect" when something is agreeable these days?