New Year Resolutions
It is the second day of the Kemetic new year, and we have entered into Heru-sa-Aset’s year. It is a year of victory, of strength, and of working hard to achieve what we desire. It is a year of community, of shared burdens and shared strengths.
I am overjoyed to leave last year behind, to start anew with Zep Tepi. As part of that, and as part of the wisdom of planning my work before I work my plan, I wanted to make a post on my overall “resolutions” or goals for the year. Public accountability, in this case, is a great thing, and I encourage any of my readers, friends, and Kemetic family to call me out if you see me forget or fall short of my own goals.
In keeping with the power of four, I have organized myself in four sections, with four items in each.
I will do less of these things: fewer overwhelmingly social-and-busy weekends, fewer social events with a particular group of people that I like but inevitably leave me too stressed and anxious, fewer large projects, and less placing myself in the position of people-handler for the less-organized.
I will do more of these things: senut once a week, physical activity and exercise, fiction and blog writing (blog once a week), and work on my tiny Jamberry business.
I will maintain a baseline of these things: sleep (yes, I do have to list it, because I tend to deprioritize it), nutrition, tending the house, and tending/handling my snakes.
And, lastly, I will not devote consistent large chunks of time to these things (unless I am happily beset with sudden free time): art (including painting, woodburning, and doodling), music (from practicing to writing new songs), community service (yet!), and everything else that acts as a time-sink.
That last paragraph is the hardest for me; I hate saying no to things I love. But I am spread thin, I am low-spooned, and I need to focus on the core things that make me into a strong, healthy, happy person. No doubt I will still sporadically engage in things that are not in the second and third paragraphs, but my resolution is not to quit everything cold turkey, only to ration and limit the time I spend on side-projects in order to advance my primary goals.
The final, and perhaps most challenging, year goal is heka—not the heka of spells and rituals, but the heka of what I say in my head and in my mouth and in my hands. Depression is an insidious decay of speech patterns, and I will fight its deprecation and pessimism. I will endeavor to clean up my humor a little bit, speak more ma’at in conversations with others, and support a healthy self-image in my thoughts and deeds. I have spent nearly a year putting myself, my wants, my needs, and my health as the very last item on a very long list, and I am done with that. (It only took like a dozen people and two gods to knock some sense in my head. *cough*)
With this, I make public my resolutions—which is heka in and of itself, you know—and I step into the new year with an open mind and a willing attitude.
Di wep ronpet nofret! Happy new year to you all! ♥
I know exactly what you mean about that “insidious decay”… I’ve also felt I spent too much time in the past year on things that did not benefit my psyche. Very recently I turned over a new leaf, and received an amazing blessing from a good friend at the outset of my new endeavor (grad school). Sometimes the hardest thing can be to take ourselves in hand and find that self-discipline again, especially in this age where there a thousand little things at our fingertips that we can rationalize as time-worthy. May we both find ourselves stronger on our paths, and stick to our resolve. :)