I have been a best friend, I have been a nobody, an extra really, on the periphery of excitement or celebrations that other people experience, I have been the leading lady in big events and situations, and I have been a main character in somebody else’s tale…I have been, and am, a variety of versions of myself. I am likely to write about the whole “New Year New Me” mindset as I have just hung my new wall calendar (so old fashioned, I know) I know it might sound juvenile, but I do truly live one life inside of my own head and one life outside, amongst others, in the real world, and both are equally important to me. By this I mean that I have a non-stop narrative going on in my head all the time as hours roll into days and days into months and months into decades…like a movie that always plays in the background while I go about the business of being alive, and sometimes the “in my brain” world jives with my “in the flesh” world. Does everybody do this? Does everybody have an entire reality in their minds that is different than the experiences they are living in real time?? I was sort of hesitant to discuss this, for a mild fear, concern perhaps, that maybe I am insane and have managed to hide it significantly enough over the years to stay under the radar of padded-room attendants! I suppose what I am wondering is if it is “normal?” …and to be clear I don’t know that I even care if I am normal, which seems like it would be rather ordinary and I feel pretty much like that could be terribly boring…but still I ask, is it normal to have life that goes on day-after-day in real time with real people, and have an EQUALLY IMPORTANT LIFE that goes on, at the same time, but only in my head?? …AND truth be told, I do, more often than not, prefer the one in my head to the real one…

I am not fond of making “resolutions” as such for a new year because as we all know, and have read and heard, they generally motivate behavior for a few weeks at most and then people, most people, go right back to their easy and normal and regular way of life or habits. Change is not easy. Change that makes us uncomfortable is even harder. Getting rid of bad habits is a habit in and of itself because you have to be diligent in your efforts to modify your behavior, and your way of thinking about it, consistently and continuously or there is no success. You have to, if you want to change ANYTHING, essentially rewrite your character. Whether your character is the extra, the leading lady, the friend, the hero, or even the villain, the role HAS TO BE REWRITTEN if the character is going to change. The leading lady and the main character of your story is not a smoker. The hero of your story is not a dead-beat-dad. The extra in your story does not secretly go through the drive-thru and then throw out all the wrappers in the public garbage can. The main character of your story does not cheat on his wife, the main character does not gamble away her social security, the main character is not a couch potato…WHATEVER role you want to change, however the behavior needs to be modified to make the part more appealing to you, or more in keeping with how you imagine the rest of the story is going to unfold, can only be created by you, for you. This is where my head is on this day, as one year ends and another starts.

In August I made many changes and decisions, and decisions to change, as my November birthday was nearing and much like I pay my property taxes every quarter, I also try to check-in with my body and mind and life every quarter as well. I have concluded that the intentions that I created as summer was ending are good, and they feel right, and I am going to keep them, and add more, for the new year. This is not a resolution necessarily but it is acknowledging that I have resolved some conflicts in my life and will move forward in ways that keep the momentum. I suppose that is the best way I can start a new year; taking what DID work, and rolling it into the year ahead while recognizing what did NOT work and leaving it behind. Changing, changing, changing, and growing, growing, growing, seems, to me at least, the best way to be the best role of me I can perform.

I know a lot of people who do not change and do not want to change and even if they say, repeatedly that they will change or things will change, nothing does. There is nothing I can do about the roles that other people play or how they choose to modify or solidify their character’s traits in their own stories. I have been terribly disappointed by some of the extras in my life and have also been surprisingly delighted by how some events unfolded but all of these experiences, the good and the bad, were the experiences of other people and I was just an extra in their story too…it goes both ways. I have accepted that I can’t fix anything about other people AND can’t keep thinking about it…if it has nothing to actually do with me; if my main character is neither directly damaged by, nor personally inconvenienced by it, then the main character does not need to waste another minute thinking about it…what the extras are doing has nothing to do with me…If that is not a good “resolution” then I don’t know what is!!!

Turning 55 turned something on in me that I was not expecting, a fire, a drive, a desire to rewrite some portions of this role and so far I am loving the editing process. My dad’s parents both lived to be nearly 100 and my mom’s parents lived into their 80’s so I feel like I am genetically lucky and likely to have at least two decades, and probably more, of life to live and I can do so much, and change so much, and experience so much still!!! I know people my age who had parents die in their late fifties and early sixties, so for them, it’s possible that The End is near and so maybe they lack the desire to change anything and are in the “why bother” mode of their story. I can’t know what they are thinking and not to sound harsh, but I no longer care. I spent a lot of time with a lot of people over my life, trying to write my part into THEIR story and that benefits me in ZERO ways.

I am at an age now where my part is the only role that I need to worry about and everybody else has to worry about their own parts…where they are on the stage of their own play…does their character have lots of flaws or only a few, is their character likable or deplorable…does their character have traits of a heroine or a victim, will the character save the day…will the character save their self…so many parts being played in so many different stories. Life is a little like reading a book or watching a play, we are IN it and OUT of it depending on how deeply we are paying attention. For the time that is left of my life, I want to focus on my role, my character’s dreams yet to be fulfilled or regrets that she is going to leave behind her, and how she is going to be better able to mingle and mix and match with all of the other characters in her story. I suppose for my “resolution” if I get to a part or a scene that feels off, or my character finds herself in a situation that I would never have written for her, I want to have the confidence to re-write…CUT!! change some stage direction and dialogue!!!

‘Tis true, life does not come with a delete or backspace key. There is no giant pink eraser…like on an elementary school essay, erasing sentences when you realize you can write something in a completely different way and your paragraph will be better! The story of what has been our lives can’t be wiped off like some ridiculous brainstorming ideas in a conference on a giant white board…BUT every single minute the way the story, your story, will end, can be changed. “You’re supposed to be the Leading Lady of your own life for god’s sake!!!” is a line from a beloved holiday movie, called The Holiday, that I watch at least once every December, and that scene always gets to me rewind, and this month got to me in a bigger way than usual…it made me feel like I wanted to put a little more zhuzh in my world, and in any way that I saw fit, and so I will. This is my invitation to you too, gentle reader, dear friend, curious stranger…if your character feels like it’s wanting, something is missing, there is some sort of misfire going on, well, maybe your story also needs some zhuzh!!! Go ahead, start a fresh chapter in this new year for yourself…see how it goes and edit where needed…Next act, Scene I…it is dark (we hear a rooster crow and the rain drizzling) she is sitting at her desk with a look of contemplation on her face (perplexed) as she works at her computer, she takes a pause (breathes deep in through her nose, out through her nose) she looks to her right and slowly smiles as she sees the tiny sliver of sun begin to rise behind the cedar trees…ACTION!

This word, bro’n, is the Irish word for sorrow and it seems to me that there is much sorrow suffered by so many this time of year. I do not suffer this time of year and in a way, because so many do, I am hesitant to go overboard with my holiday joyfulness because sometimes it makes it feel like I am gloating…I am deeply grateful that my life has been, in more ways than not, idyllic, but deeply sad for those whose lives have had far more anguish and ache than mine.

My work schedule and lifestyle has never had television be an integral part of my days, however, on days over the years if I was home and sick, or in the winter when my work was very slow, or over the years home with a sick grandchild who was missing school, I would take that opportunity to turn on NBC at 3 o’clock and watch the Ellen show. I loved her show and her wit and her kindness and it was always a great show to me regardless of who her guest was, however some guests I loved more than others. She also liked to start her show with a bit of a dance down the aisle and her DJ Twitch was on the stage and played some music and interacted with her and the audience and often danced and performed as well. His manner was upbeat and he was fun to watch and it added an element of jubilation to an afternoon talk show. Yesterday when I got home from work I was looking at Instagram on my phone and the first thing that showed up was a picture of Twitch that read that he was dead at age 40 by suicide. This is the same man who, with the element of jubilation he shared with his wife, danced and posted videos every few days during the pandemic when all of us were craving interaction, or our fitness classes, or just some fun outside of our homes, and those videos that they called The Boss Family Work Out, were one of the best things on Instagram during the pandemic. I felt so sad so fast when I read that he was dead and then I went to google to read the news associated with the information and just felt, oddly, as I did not know him at all, like I had been kicked in the gut. How could a person who seemingly had everything; gorgeous house, pretty wife, beautiful & healthy kids, and money, LOTS and lots of money, suffer enough despair to want to die and then have the bravery to do the deed of killing himself??!! I slept poorly last night and could not stop thinking about him, his family, and what it means to be stable and content, because it is abundantly clear that what we think would make us all happier, is not what actually makes a human happier…

Kate Spade, Robin Williams, Chris Cornell, Anthony Bourdain, Naomi Judd just to name the first few that came to the top of my head…LOTS and lots of success and LOTS and lots of people who think they were fantastic and yet none of the money or fans could save them from their own despair and sorrow. I do not understand it, at all, and my heart breaks for those who literally have lost all hope. I have gone through very sad and very bad times in my life, but I always had confidence that it would neither last nor linger and that brighter days would be ahead…always optimistic that sunny times were going to soon brighten up my darkness and I hoped that it (whatever it was at the time) would change sooner rather than later, but always had hope. It hurts me to think that there are people who have the feeling of hopelessness despite their lives, on the surface, all that WE SEE, appearing to be truly enviable in every measurable way.

I had been itching to write for days about how much I love to decorate for the holiday season, and how excited I am to get on my computer next week in the wee morning hours to watch the Solstice at Stonehenge on the live stream video, and how much I love my new purple holiday lights and so much glitter is here right now, sparkly and shimmery objects on every single surface and gosh does it delight me!!! …but what I felt I had to write this morning is that it is all well and good to share the suicide hot line number and to tell people who are suffering to please ask for help but it seems to me that the people who have the nerve to “do the deed” are just simply beyond any suicide prevention protocol, no psychiatrist or therapist or hypnosis can help them. Here is a person with three children, a wife, lots of money and lots of talent and I suspect that no amount of pleading with him in that hotel room, “think of your kids, think of how sad this will make their Christmases for the rest of their lives” “think of how many tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people you made smile during a lock-down and global pandemic with your choreography and moves and play lists” would have made a difference if the voices in his head and the words between his ears did not care about any of the practical realities of life and thought everything would be better if he were dead. I literally thought, during the pandemic, almost every time I watched one of the videos with Twitch and his wife, “that’s the kind of joy I would want in a marriage” or I’d think “how great to have such a thing in common, loving to dance, how fun that would be” and here it turns out it does not matter, and did not matter, at all…’love everyone and don’t be a jerk’ is what one of my yoga teachers tells us at the end of every class and I guess that’s really all we can do, because for some the bro’n is too great to bear…