New Year’s Resolutions can be dangerous territory for people whose confidence is shaky.  Here we sit, at the front door of a new year, and, almost like offering a secret password, we are invited to make all kinds of promises about how we will improve before we walk inside.  I’m a believer in New Year’s Resolutions because I believe that there is always room for at least modest self-improvement (also because I love a project).  But I can easily remember the dawn of 1994 when I was an insecure sophomore in high school.  I laid out an impossible list of arbitrary resolutions that encompassed everything from journaling to my weight to my golf game.

My self-destructive perfectionism at that time is a story for another day.  (And I can happily tell you now that a few months later I blew off my high maintenance list and began accepting myself as I was.)  However, each December as I lay out my best intentions for the coming year I think back on my 16-year-old self as a reminder of how depressing and overwhelming resolutions run amok can become.  I make a point to remind myself that I have lots of great qualities too.

I thought more about this premise of “what’s good about me” this week when a pair of posts got me to thinking about how we (women in particular) can be so reluctant to admit that there actually are lots of great things about ourselves.  The first post was from Kristen at Motherse who confided that she is, like many women, uncomfortable accepting a compliment.  The second post was from Julia Moulden at The Huffington Post who wrote about an exercise she conducted with a number of women wherein she asked them what quality about themselves they love and would never give up.

I find it disheartening to confront the fact that many women (and many quite remarkable women) are so hard on themselves.  We look in the mirror and we see everything that we wish weren’t.  The crow’s feet.  The smudged, end-of-the-day mascara.  The frazzled parent.  The body that doesn’t look quite like it did before we had babies.  And on, and on, and on.

But what of the things we don’t see?  What of the things we dismiss because we’re sure they don’t count?  What about our curious minds?  What about our well-honed opinions?  What about our laughing children?  What about our rich, time-worn friendships?  What about 30-odd years of experiences and wisdom?  Why don’t we count those things?

When I look at my friends I see a laundry list of admirable qualities.  I see compassion.  I see humor.  I see incredible style.  I see self-deprecation.  I see bravery.  I see shiny, bouncy hair.  I see loyalty.  I see gratitude.  I see money management skills.  I see intellect.  And I see abounding generosity.  But I’m not entirely sure that my friends see these things in themselves.

My first post of 2011 listed my resolutions for the year; things I want to change.  But having thought through it a bit further I think it’s also important to acknowledge the things I’d never change about myself.   I suppose I should follow my own rules, though, so here goes.

Things I would never change about myself:

My love of reading.  My culinary skills.  My commitment to healthy eating and regular exercise.  My upturned nose and sea of freckles.  My confidence.  My inquisitive mind.  And my patience as a mother.

There is a lot about me that I could do better.  But there are quite a few things that are pretty good already.  It’s good to remember that.   I should probably make this list more than once a year.  So should you!

Okay, yout turn.  Don’t leave me hanging.  I think we could all benefit from acknowledging our best traits.  So chime in!

Earlier this week I attended a business dinner with several colleagues.  With the social lubrication of a drink under our belts the conversation veered from professional to personal realms.  Younger members of the group complained of approaching 30th birthdays.  Older members of the group traded war stories of raising teenagers.  And eventually one member of the group told the story of how he got together with his wife.

This man is usually all business, so it was refreshing to hear him speak so candidly about his personal life.  Since he was a bit older (40-ish) when he married, embedded into his story was the following synopsis of how his selection criteria in a potential wife changed as he aged:

When I was in my early twenties I thought, “She’s beautiful.  And I love her.”

When I was in my mid-twenties I thought, “She’s beautiful and she’s funny.  And I love her.”

When I was in my late twenties I thought, “She’s beautiful and she’s funny and she’s smart.  And I love her.”

When I was in my early thirties I thought, “She’s smart and she’s funny and she’s rather pretty.  And I love her.”

When I was in my mid-thirties I thought, “She’s smart and she’s got a solid career and she’s funny and she’s really somewhat attractive.  And I love her.”

When I was in my late thirties I thought, “She’s level headed and I enjoy her company and she’s not altogether bad looking.  And I love her.”

And when I hit 40 I thought, “This is really someone I can work with for a long time.”

I suppose if I were this man’s wife and I wanted to choose the most objectionable interpretation of his story I could be offended that he seems to be implying that it was only after he lowered his standards six or seven times that he found himself interested in marrying me.  But having heard his little litany firsthand I can vouch that this isn’t how he meant it at all.

Rather, what he meant to convey was how foolish we can be in our youth.  When we are 22 appearances are paramount.  But by the time we turn 30 we need more.  We need someone we can relate to, someone who can have a conversation, someone who is fun.  And as we age further we need more still.  We need compatibility.  Give and take.  Balance.  Trust.  Fulfillment.  And a thousand other things that mere beauty can’t deliver. 

If you think about it his standards actually increased over time.  Finding a beautiful man/woman?  Not so hard.  Finding a man/woman you want to build a life with?  A Herculean task.

What I find curious about this little phenomenon of evolving tastes is that it takes us so long to figure out what really matters.  Do 20-year-olds not care about a decent conversation?  Do they not care about a good laugh?  Do they not care about common interests and values?  Or is it that at such a young age the need for real compatibility seems so far off that in our youth we indulge ourselves in the qualities we know can’t matter as much when we start to look at “forever”?

I like to think that I had a better-than-average head on my shoulders back then.  In retrospect, I know I didn’t.  So I suppose the fact that I ended up with a handsome husband is either a function of dumb luck or hard work.  Actually, I think it’s a bit of both.

Fitting that it’s Wednesday, because at the moment I am fixated on getting over the hump.  By the calendar I cleared the halfway point of 2010 on July 1.  But, even with little more than two weeks left in the year, right now I feel awfully far away from a downhill slide to January. 

I come to this post feeling frazzled and lackluster.  I need to be professionally astute.  I need to resume my regular workouts which have gone on hiatus the past couple of weeks.  I need to find my motivation to finish out the holiday season as I pledged to do – with spirit and pleasure and joy. 

And yet, I am pining for December 23^rd, when we will drive to my in-laws’ house where I will curl up into a ball for three days.  I will fall asleep on sofas and my mother-in-law will drape me with blankets.  I will roll around on thick carpet with IEP and play with nieces and nephews and toys.  I will gab with my sisters-in-law for hours.  And I will shower only when absolutely necessary.    

But December 23^rd is still more than a week away.  And in the interim I must purchase and wrap gifts.  I must defend a professional opinion to my superiors.  I must finish a book I started more than a month ago.  I must complete a few personal projects to which I’m committed.  And I must not let it all get me down. 

Last night I slogged through my workout.  My feet were heavy against the treadmill.  I collapsed from my planks after less than a minute.  My arm muscles twitched with each curl and each shoulder press.  And when it was over I felt both defeated and triumphant.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was done.  And in some strange way it energized me to tackle these things that hang over my head. 

I am eager for January.  I am eager for a fresh start.  For the burst of energy that follows two short weeks in the office.  For the adrenaline rush of a new list of resolutions.  For a year about which I have high hopes.

I am eager to get over this hump.

I have long struggled with the difference between “secret” and “private.”  As a kid it was ingrained in me that if I there was anything in my life that I couldn’t share with my parents, then it was probably something I shouldn’t be involved in.  Nothing in my life should be secret.  Period.  It took me until I was out of college to arrive at a place where I was comfortable having components of my life that were private; where I didn’t assume that keeping things private was some sort of acknowledgement of impropriety. 

Nevertheless, as an “open book” kind of person, even with that level of comfort achieved, there was not much about my life that I wasn’t willing to discuss in casual conversation with just about anyone.  That held true until January 1^st of this year.  That was the day I launched this blog.  I publicized it to friends and family, but – very intentionally – not to any of my coworkers. 

I kept it a secret.  At least that was how it felt.

Then last Thursday, after weeks of equivocation, I spilled my secret.  I am working with my sister-in-law/blog designer to make a few updates to this site.  We have come up with some new graphics and I was interested in an outside perspective, so I very quietly asked the graphic designer at work to stop by my office when he had a few minutes.

I was shy.  I was a sheepish.  I was unsure of myself and felt awkward about the whole thing.  My colleague, on the other hand, was unfazed by my embarrassment.  He offered his candid feedback, which was insightful and helpful in a variety of ways.  Then when I began to apologize for myself and my concerns about keeping my “secret” he countered.  

“It’s not a secret,” he said.

“But no one else in the office knows about it,” I responded.

“That doesn’t mean it’s a secret.  It’s a private passion.  Artists have private passions all the time,” he said.

“I guess I don’t think of myself as an artist.”

“Well maybe you should.”

And that was where the conversation left me without a response.  Maybe I should.  Maybe I should think of myself as an artist.  Maybe I should broaden the list of descriptions that I typically apply to myself.  Maybe wife, mother, and marketing professional do not adequately encompass the full scope of Gale. 

As I have thought further about this conversation I’m still not sure that “artist” is the right word to describe me.  But I like the idea that there are more words to describe me than I have perhaps previously acknowledged.  And I wonder how my existing list of descriptors has limited me up to this point.  How many times have I made a decision not to do something with the subconscious refrain of “Well, I’m not a(n) X” running through my mind?  How many more things might I have tried?  How much more freedom might I have given myself?

When I look in the mirror I see a wife, a working mother, a sister, and a friend.  But do I see an artist?  Do I see a writer?  Do I see a humanitarian?  Do I see a risk taker?  Do I see someone who is brave?  If the answer to those questions is No, it surely influences the way I live my life.  But to what avail? 

I like the idea that I may live a more interesting version of my life if I open the door to a broader range of identities.  I like the idea that I can be (or perhaps already am) something I never imagined.

As I think about the people I see in person on a daily basis, it is a short list: GAP and IEP, our nanny, my coworkers, and one or two neighbors.  As I think about the people who are most important in my life, it is a slightly longer list: GAP and IEP, our nanny, my family, GAP’s family (which is huge), and my girlfriends.  The thing that strikes me about these two lists is the minimal amount of overlap.  Of all the people who matter most to me, only three – husband, son, and nanny – do I see every day.  This bothers me.

It bothers me in part for obvious reasons – a lot of people I love live far away and that is hard.  But it also bothers me because of this article which says, “Hey Gale, you are doomed to a life of dissatisfaction and interpersonal failure because you don’t have weekly personal contact with the important people in your life!” …  Okay, that’s not quite what it said, but that’s how it registered with me.  (In case you don’t want to click over, the article is actually about a study showing that electronic communication is not a satisfactory substitute for in-person communication and nurture of professional relationships.) 

Juxtapose that article with this post which I read last week about the ages from 25 to 40 being a perilous time for women’s friendships, and you end up with Gale (who is 33 and smack-dab in the middle of that range) finding herself a little spooked.  I want to have and maintain meaningful relationships.  I want to have friendships that are mutually satisfying and valuable and precious.  And I worry that the structure of my life can’t readily facilitate this.

I will pause here to offer the following disclaimer: I understand that some of these things are within my control.  I control how often I call a long-distance friend to chat and catch up.  I control how often I reach out for a lunch or coffee date.  I am not purely a victim of circumstance in the fate of my friendships.  Nevertheless, the logistics of the young working parent are demanding, and it shows.

Most of my childhood friends I haven’t seen in years.  The same is true of most of my friends from college.  Time and distance have loosened those bonds.  And while many of the people still matter a great deal to me, the friendships themselves have atrophied.  I have a good group of girlfriends from graduate school.  We are like-minded career girls who have a great time together.  But between jobs and young families (our group has experienced a baby boom in the past three years) it took dozens of e-mails and an online poll just to find a single time slot in the month of December for a holiday get-together.

And so I sit and struggle with this conundrum.  I lack the BFF – the lifelong friend who knows me intimately; who both accepts and challenges me; with whom my conversations can resume after a month as though no time had passed.  I lack this friendship in my life.  (I’m not counting my sister here.)  Given this, I am faced with the fact that to maintain the friendships I do have I am going to have to put forth incredible effort.  Even with such effort I may be disappointed with the results.  I may just be in a period when female friendships exist more in the background than in the forefront of my life. 

We are a young family.  We go out with friends a couple of times a month and are reasonably social, but this is still a period of our lives that is going to be largely marked by bibs and sippy cups and bedtimes.  Life is full of tradeoffs; I know that.  But for reasons that I cannot entirely articulate, this one is hitting me harder than some of the others.

Hello?  Are you in there?  Are you paying attention?

Apparently, the answer to those questions, 46.9% of the time, is No.

According to a new study we spend nearly half of our waking hours steered by a wandering mind.  And what’s more, letting our minds wander makes us resoundingly unhappy. 

As I think about this premise in my own life, it rings true.  I let my mind wander a lot, but something about the aimlessness of it is actually unsatisfying.  When I look at my professional life I feel the best about myself and my career on days when I’m particularly engaged.  On those days I am more invested and more productive.  On those days I feel good about having spent a day in an office, running to and from meetings, and sorting through e-mails.  On days when I am disengaged I may go through all the same motions, but they lack meaning and significance.

What baffles me about this though, is that I’m still inclined to let my mind wander as it does.  Are my meetings really that much more interesting on “engaged” days than on “disengaged” days?  Likely not.  And if I know that I am happier when I am on task then why do I continue to let myself jot down grocery lists, Christmas gift ideas, and the color scheme of my future home when I know I should be paying attention to a colleague’s presentation?   

The article that first pointed me onto this topic goes on to tie the aforementioned study to mindfulness, which is a concept that has never really resonated with me (probably because the word itself gets the wind knocked out of it by my own pragmatism and disinclination toward anything new-agey).  But unhappiness is a word that gets my attention.  I certainly don’t want to be unhappy. 

[Everything from this point on is rooted in the statistical significance of a sample size of one: my own mind.  Proceed at your own risk.]

I wonder if we have such trouble staying engaged because we don’t give our minds a break.  We are constantly stimulated.  We are always within arm’s reach of a phone call, a television, a streaming video, a text message, or an e-mail.  We juggle home and professional commitments.  We use our down time to stimulate our minds further with various forms of entertainment.  When do our increasingly-taxed minds rest?

I am not here to advocate mental laziness (which would most certainly fly in the face of the very premise of this blog).  Rather, I wonder whether scheduling some mental downtime might make our overall level of engagement higher.  I read an essay in a fitness magazine a few years back by a marathoner who found that by taking one-minute walk breaks throughout the race he was able to quicken his overall pace.  If we schedule mental walk breaks – times that are earmarked for mental idleness, that are devoid of phone calls, e-mails, books, or conversation – mightn’t we be better positioned to stay actively engaged in our lives the rest of the time?

I haven’t the faintest idea if this little paradigm has merit.  But I aim to find out.

Lots of people who are knowledgeable about such things have been saying for a long time that the current American model of suburban sprawl is unsustainable.  It is inefficient and heavily reliant on fossil fuels.  It is predicated on the existence cheap and easy capital.  And it collapses under even moderate economic pressures.  However, throughout the world time has tested and proven a couple of other models – the big city and the small town.  What do these formats of civilization bear in common?  Ironically, size. 

Sure, big cities look nothing like small towns on the face of it.  But if you dig a bit deeper you’ll find some keen similarities.  City dwellers might get to know their doorman just as rural folks might know their mailman.  Both are accustomed to shopping from independently owned shops (the corner bodega and the general store are not such a far cry from each other).  And neither one probably lives in a 7,000 square foot McMansion with 15 bathrooms and vaulted ceilings. 

The modern-day suburban scenario seems so normal to us now, but I wonder if history will see it as the outlier.  I wonder if we will return to lives that are smaller in scale than the existence many of us live today.  Conveniently, I’m not the only person with this query.  Boyce Thompson, the editorial director of Builder magazine, shares my curiosity.  So he commissioned the design of a new concept home - Home for the New Economy - which was debuted at this year’s International Builders Show.  

As explained in this article, at just 1,700 square feet this concept home is smaller than the American average by 800 square feet, and smaller than most suburban McMansions by a factor of two or three.  The virtual tour available on the website reveals a home that is cozy in an electronic rendering, but which could feel cramped when filled to the brim with the typical family’s full array of accoutrement.  Nevertheless, a commitment to ridding one’s life of unnecessary excess could render this type of space quite livable.  The description of the master bedroom indicates it is designed to be “a place of rest and privacy, not a palatial retreat or mini-theatre…”  Something about the scale and scope of such a room really appeals to me.

But there is always a “but.”  And the “but” in this case is what we ask of our houses.  In addition to shelter, electricity, and safety, we ask our homes to say something about us.  We ask them to identify us in some way.  Successful.  Minimalist.  Showy.  Modest.  Modern.  Traditional.   And so on.  We see our homes as an extension of ourselves and all that we have accomplished in life thus far.  It’s a tall order.  And as our homes have become proxies for ourselves they have ballooned in size such that many are about to burst.  (Or be shuttered by foreclosure, as the case may be.)

I am no expert.  Nor am I wholly innocent in this game.  (We expect to outgrown our current home in the next four or five years.)  And yet I wonder what it will take for Americans to change our paradigm.  What crisis of faith (or net worth) must we endure before we will divorce our egos from our addresses?  At what point will we reassemble ourselves into an existence that is sustainable.  At what point will 1,700 square feet feel adequate for a typical family?  I don’t pretend to know.  But I do intend to watch and find out.

Say you are a video game junkie.  Say you love to play Grand Theft Auto or Mortal Kombat.  Say you spend hours upon hours lost in this virtual space taking on avatar personas and doing untold damage on the digital world you inhabit.  What does that mean for your real life when your mom/girlfriend/wife calls you up to dinner?  (I have to assume that if this description fits you that you are also male and in a basement.  Some stereotypes are just too hard to pass up…  I kid.  Sort of.)

I ask these questions because of a story I heard on NPR on Monday.

The popular video game Medal of Honor is getting a lot of press for its latest version of the game.  All of the hoopla has to do with the fact that the new release originally allowed users to select the Taliban as their gaming avatar.  (The final version of the new release changed the name of this avatar option to “Opposition Forces.”)  Now, I am not a gaming junkie.  Far from it.  (I haven’t played anything since the original Super Mario Brothers.)  And I think this may be why I found this piece by Heather Chaplin so fascinating. 

The story begins by explaining the Taliban/Opposition Forces controversy above, but then delves into a discussion of the psychology of play versus other forms of entertainment.  Take movies as an example.  We watch (and acclaim) movies about sensitive and violent subject matters all the time.  You need look no further than Saving Private Ryan or Bowling for Columbine or The Hurt Locker to know that.  Chaplin comments, “Games are held to a different standard. … This double standard between movies and games stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the psychology of play.”

There is a common argument among gaming critics that by making a game out of these subjects they are inherently trivialized.  But somehow this critique is not leveled against books, movies, or television shows.  When I watched the movie Jarhead I could sense in every scene the seriousness with which the filmmakers took their subject.  I felt intimately acquainted with the plight of the characters by the end of the film.  The idea of turning this premise into a game is off-putting to me.  My inner monologue says, “… but this isn’t a game.  This actually happened!” 

The NPR story then goes on to explain that video games are actually more intense for people watching them, than they are for the players.  The players must maintain a sense of detachment from the game in order to interact with it.  That is, in order to run, jump, shoot or strategize you must always maintain the understanding that you are causing the action which continuously reiterates to the player that it isn’t real. 

I suppose that’s what clinches it for me.  These things – things like war – are real.  We should not come to these topics in a way that allows us to deny that reality.  It’s not that I think gamers will run out into the streets killing people because they can’t understand the difference between true and digital realities.  It’s the fact that the gamers can (and do) make that distinction that I find most troubling.  The act of gaming allows them to take something that is an unendurable hell for many people, and turn it into an afternoon pastime. 

In this follow-up opinion piece former Marine Corps officer Benjamin Busch comments that, “For those who truly want to play for a Medal of Honor, recruiters are standing by. Only eight have been awarded since we invaded Afghanistan. All but one have been posthumous.”

According to the brief description following his byline, Thomas Moore (not the poet or the saint), “has been a monk, a musician, a professor, a psychotherapist, an author, and a lecturer.”  My initial response to that mini-bio is to think, “Wow, someone couldn’t make up his mind, could he?”  But that is tacky and judgmental and wholly irrelevant in this case because in this article he makes some very interesting points.

How many new electronic gadgets have you purchased in the past five years?  How many pieces of artwork have you acquired during that same time?  I realize the second question feels like a non sequitur to the first.  But Moore poses this question because he believes that the latter in some way counterbalances the first; like a cultural carbon offset.  He likens technological additions to our lives to coolness – with every Kindle, iPad, or Droid we become cooler.  The problem with this, he asserts, is that we should also add things to our lives that make us warmer.  The things that Moore proposes make us warmer?  Non-technological things: artwork, music, books, and the like.    

There’s something appealing about this idea to me; the idea that as things in life make us cooler (metaphorically speaking, of course) that we should take steps to make ourselves warmer.  We should not be allowed to evolve into mechanized versions of ourselves, engaging with the world and with each other only through objects with on/off switches.  Moore writes, ”There’s nothing wrong with cool… But if cool gets in the way of warm, we individuals and the culture at large lose important values: connection, empathy, nostalgia, a strong sense of home and civility.” 

This was where I really got on board.  Connection, empathy, nostalgia, home, and civility are words that resonate with me.  If those words are a part of my life then I’m probably doing something right.  Right?  At the end of a day, or even moreso at the end of a life, these are the components of our lives that matter the most.  These are the barometers of a life well lived.

The other aspect of Moore’s cooler/warmer premise that I like is that as he explains it our coolness and warmth are not mutually exclusive.  He does not ask us to eradicate our coolness; to recycle our iPhones or Tivos and return to the existence of a pre-Alexander Graham Bell time.  He allows us our gadgets, but merely asks that as we accumulate them we even ourselves with other additions to our lives that balance them out. 

I’m not a huge gadget junkie.  And I think I probably rank higher on the warm scale than the cool scale most days.  But Moore’s ideas ring true to me, and as I add new technological gear to my life I should work to make sure that the warmer things in my life are not subsumed by the cool.

The blogosphere is supposed to be a place where we can say the things we’re otherwise afraid to say.  I’ve been blogging for nine months now, and this is what I’ve been afraid to say.

For the most part I love blogging.  I love the way it makes me think, and process, and choose words, and explore ideas.  But there are moments when this online world reminds me of myself as an insecure teenager.  I read what you write.  And I compare myself to you. 

There has been some rough stuff in the blogosphere this week.  There has been talk of loss, unrelenting sadness, depression, and stigma.  These topics accompany other frequent and similar topics – refrains of estrangement, dysfunction, financial strain, and general struggle to keep up with life’s curve balls.  This makes it sound like our virtual community is a downer of a place to hang out.  The amazing thing about it, though, is that nothing could be further from the truth.  We bare our souls only to find them uplifted by our friends and counterparts, which isn’t depressing at all.  But – especially in my less confident moments – it has gotten me thinking about some things.

Many of you walk through your real-world lives carrying incredible weight.  You feel obligated to obfuscate these burdens with smiles and cheery discourse.  And it is only here in this virtual space that you finally feel at liberty to unburden yourself through honesty and confrontation and confession.  I am grateful that the online world offers us this freedom.  And I am honored and privileged to respond to your posts and attempt to alleviate your pains in some feeble way.  But when it comes to my own interactions I find myself in quite the opposite position. 

I am a fundamentally happy person with a fundamentally happy life.  This is a good thing, but not stylish or dramatic, and sometimes, here in this place, I feel that I should leave it conveniently unwritten.  Rather than masking my sadness to the real world I find myself masking my happiness in the virtual one.  (Perhaps this is why I most frequently write about my responses to other topics, rather than my own life.  Privacy is certainly an issue, but for the most part a happy life is not interesting fodder for reflection.  Tolstoy got that one right.)

But blogging is supposed to be the venue to bring our authentic selves forth.  We are to drop our veils and state the unfettered truth about who we are.  And if this is the case then today is the day I will do just that:  I am happy.  I am perky.  I am outgoing.  I laugh a lot.  I have never lost a parent, sibling, spouse, or child.  My family and I are all in good health.  My marriage is strong.  My faith is sturdy, but not unquestioned.  I have been fortunate.  I am not without grey days, but they are few in number and short in duration.

I do not mean to be arrogant or proud.  And I do not – ever for one moment – take these things for granted.  I say them because they are true.  And if this is the place to say the things that are true then I want to do that.  I just hope that you’ll accept me as I am even when it doesn’t blend into the blogging scenery.