The Year of No Bullsh!t is two months in, and like many of my named years, it is not really turning out as I expected. It shouldn't really be that surprising.
The original name of my year was the Year of No Guilt, No Excuses. It was born of an exhaustion of making excuses for why I couldn't get my life together. The kids were too little, I was too tired, the days were too short, money was too tight...
I geared up for my year with much planning and anticipation, working hard to research and focus in on what I really wanted to accomplish. But what I didn't anticipate was that the guilt side of the no-guilt-no-excuses year weighed far heavier than I thought it did. I was making excuses, not as a way to avoid entering into the hard work of making the life I wanted, but as a way to curb all the guilt I felt for not already living the life I wanted.
I dove mightily into the beginning of a year that was to contain physical fitness, practical tidiness, budget mindfulness, meal planning...all the shit that I hadn't been focusing on due to all the excuses that I had been making for the last 18 months. And after a few weeks, I realized that these weren't magical fixes to my hot-mess life. In fact, some of the efforts were making me miserable. I was guilting myself into things instead of actually being motivated to do them, and it was just making things worse.
So I stopped. I stopped working out. I stopped forcing meal planning. I stopped the dream of room-by-room tidiness overhaul. And I started looking at all the guilt. Why do I feel guilty for not working out? Is this expectation practical? Is it possible all of the time? Is it meaningful to me in some way? Right now? No. It's just a thing I said I'd do. But what if... What if I didn't workout AND didn't feel guilty about it? What would that even look like?
It's been a process, friends. A real working out of emotions and priorities. One that I should have maybe started with back in October. But the evaluation is slowing working. I'm recognizing (re-recognizing?) that I am highly motivated by meaning. And if there's no meaning, there's very little motivation, but there's still a whole lot of guilt and shoulda-coulda-woulda's lingering about.
So, with the new calendar year upon us, a time of year I rarely capitalize on for focus, goals, or motivation, I'm contemplating a mulligan to my year. Because in order to truly have a year with neither guilt nor excuses to living the life I want, I need to understand why I might experience guilt and why I might craft excuses first. And that requires a much deeper look at what is truly meaningful to me.
In the end, I think some of the things I started with this year will eventually be back on as priorities, but they will not be obligations to fulfill. They will be meaningful contributions to crafting a meaningful life.
