In January of 2014 I was inspired by friends on Facebook to create a “2014 Jar of Awesomeness.” I was determined that 2014 was going to be a great year for my family. We were going to be so overflowing with awesomeness that we would stuff our quart-sized jar full of little slips of paper, describing all the awesome things we did together.
This did not happen. There was plenty of awesome in 2014, but there was also a lot of disappointment and frustration. Having a family is not easy. It’s not easy. Being with the same partner for 15 years is not easy. It is not awesome all the time. Sometimes awesome happens rarely. This jar was a terrible idea. Instead of reenforcing how I was going to focus on making more awesome happen, it just reminded me how little awesome really was happening. This jar made me lonely, frustrated, angry, sad. This nearly empty jar sat for a year, with just 6 pieces of paper added to it. One of the pieces of paper reads “I painted the hall closet.” That is not awesome. If awesome things did happen, they seemed to happen with only part of the family. I wanted awesome togetherness. I wanted a lot of things, the jar did not deliver these things.
I was so depressed about the jar by the end of 2014 that it just sat on the shelf for an entire year before I had the strength to open it. In the last couple of months, I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to this idea of wanting happiness. Happiness is great, I want lots of happiness, but I’ve been thinking, maybe I need to give more respect to all those other feelings. I think I was really good at shoving lots of feelings deep down in an attempt to “let the sunshine in.” It doesn’t work. I managed to only suppress parts of myself that are incredibly important to my overall well being. compromised things in order to keep things civilized. I’m now not so sure civilized is the best way to live life.
And so, this year, I introduce: The Jar of “-Ness.” This jar will be filled with thoughts; happy thoughts, sad thoughts, and all the thoughts in between and beyond. This jar will be filled with -ness, whatever -ness I feel like for that day and I’m going to try to write one for each day. It hasn’t started off very cheery, and I’m ok with that. The first day included a statement about how my soul ached and was lonely.. not exactly what you’d think of as a “social media friendly” new years day thought. I’m giving myself permission to feel whatever it is I want to feel. I’d like to tell you it feels good, but that wouldn’t be honest. It feels vulnerable, it’s scary, it’s exhilarating and right now it’s a bit depressing.
So… welcome 2016. I accept your challenges and wonder. I look forward to whatever passion, complacency, frustration, anger, laugher, love, sadness you bring me. I accept all facets of you and I look forward to getting to know you. Please try to be a little easy on me.
