I am not a big New Year’s reveler. My acknowledgment of the new calendar year usually consists of sticking my head under the pillow at midnight when the shouting wakes me up. I also accept the day off from work, albeit grudgingly. (Can’t I work on New Year’s and take off on one of my holidays? Answer: No. The computer system couldn’t process that request. Neither could my boss.)
Anyway, I recently started using a feed reader, and every other blogger seems to have a New Year’s post. Resolutions or retrospectives or predictions or something like that. So now I feel like I need a New Year’s themed post.
Retrospective:
WordPress is kind enough to restropect on my blog for me. I have posted their stats for you.
Resolutions:
I don’t do resolutions. I have better things to fail at. Besides, what does a shidduch blogger resolve to do? Get married this year? Thank you. I’ve been working on this for seven years. Why would I suddenly succeed now?
Maybe I could resolve to be a better dater. Try throwing out my list or just stop dumping guys because they aren’t worth giving up my hair for. But eh. No. A girl needs some standards. I’m sticking with my list.
So no resolutions. Great! Moving right along, let’s make some predictions.
Predictions:
I predict that 75% of the 19-year-olds who found this blog during a late-night, post-date googling session will be engaged by the end of the year. I predict that 75% of the long-time readers will not be—and I’m including the married readers in that number.
Not to disparage the 19-year-old readership. I think being single at 19 is more miserable than being single at 27. I’m just so used to it by now. All those raw emotions are covered with so much scar tissue. I no longer care about the things that got me ranting (and writing) at 19. I apologize to my readers: I just don’t have the passion any more. Maybe I should predict my retirement in the next year.
Starting Fresh:
Is there such a thing as starting fresh?
I once had a theory that one of the great harms in relationships comes from the “you always do this” mindset. That is “You have done this thing I don’t like several times in the past, therefore I assume you will do it again now, and I’m going to preempt that or overreact to innocent errors and statements as if you were repeating this past offense.”
So I did a thought experiment. What if you could treat your friends and relatives as completely fresh slates every day? Nothing they’ve done in the past will affect how you perceive them now.
And I realized that this kind of negates the whole point of a relationship. Knowing and understanding the other person, what they do, like, and think, and also what they probably need to work on.
Why am I rambling on this way? Fresh starts. Right. I don’t believe in those either. I am not a brand new person at the start of a new year. I’m the same old flawed me. And chances are good I’m going to continue making the same mistakes this year that I’ve made in the past. But I will take this “stop and think” moment to strike a deal with me: I’ll erase the “you always” mentality if I can prove that I actually don’t always.
Time to get cracking.
It’s 2014!
Bad for Shidduchim 