New Years Resolutions

It's the Jewish New Year - or actually, it was the Jewish New Year last week, but I'm just now getting around to resolutions.  As a convert Judaism, each year I have to relearn what each holiday is really about.  Because each year, it seems to mean a little something different to me.  This year, I'm very focused on resolutions - about thinking about the kind of person I want to me, the ways in which I failed to live up to what I should have been in the past year, and the opportunities going forward to make the world, my world, a better place.  I'm a 37 year old woman, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a stepmother, a stepdaughter, a sister, step-sister, aunt and niece.  My life is made up of relationships, and at this stage of my life, it's really more dominated by my relationships rather than my own identity.  Which is okay, as long as I don't lose sight of the fact that there is more to me than how I relate to other people.

So I'm thinking about how I could have been a better daughter, a better friend, a better wife, a better mother.  Ways in which I want to change.  I want to be more patient, more present.  All the way around.  I have a tendency to multi-task, like most moms, and unfortunately, I tend to multi-task all the time.  Which isn't great, in terms of being able to actually pay attention to the child in front of me, or the husband trying to tell me something or the mother on the phone.  It's great in terms of getting stuff done, because I get a lot of stuff done, but for this year, I'm going to try and focus less on getting stuff done and more on paying attention to what's right in front of me.

Another resolution that I've been working on, and hope to continue to improve with, is not apologizing for the clutter.  I have three small kids, two stepdaughters, a husband, friends who are in and out of my house.  My house is always a mess.  Always.  Looking around the room now, I can see a thousand things I'd like to sweep thru and pick up, and it's never not like that.  But you know what?  I've got a family, and a life, and my house will never NOT look "lived in."  And that's okay.  It's not filthy.  It's not unhealthily dirty, it's vacuumed and swept and mopped, but I'm never not going to have shoes scattered everywhere, baby dolls willy nilly all over the place and blocks galore.  Well, not never, but not for the foreseeable future, thank goodness :-).  I never go to someone's house and think to myself  "my God, what a disaster, you'd think she'd clean a little..."  And if that's what people are thinking when they come to my house, well, then, I sincerely hope they keep it to themselves or that they just don't visit anymore.