Regret isn’t permanently attached to every decision: sometimes the regret lasts a fraction of a second, of a millisecond, just a random thought that crosses my mind, lighting up a path I didn’t take.

This makes every decision I’ve made, for even the smallest amount of time, seem like a bad decision. I’ve regretted going to the (really quite prestigious) college I attended; maybe I should have gone to the college other members of my family attended.  I’ve regretted moving to every city I’ve ever lived in, even Austin where I’ve lived for longer than any other place as an adult and which I love.  I’ve regretted every job I’ve ever had; I should be doing something else. I’ve regretted every bite of food I’ve ever taken. If it’s something I “should” eat, I regret that I’m not eating what I really want; and if it’s something I “shouldn’t” eat, I regret I’m not eating something healthy.

When I think about my extensive regretting, I always think of Madonna saying back in the 90s (or was it the 80s?) that she had absolutely no regrets. How is that even possible? I find it hard to fathom a life without regret. I understand the idea that your current life, and happiness is built on your past decisions. So why regret them? I regret them because I constantly feel that my current life isn’t enough. It’s not what I want it to be. So I look back at all the little twists and turns I’ve taken and I wonder if at any point, if I’d made a different decision, even a different kind of decision, I’d be where I want to be.

I still feel I’ve got some grand adventure in me. But I don’t know what decisions to make to make it happen. Give up the house I just bought? Not having a house never prompted it. Quit my job? I’ll do nothing but worry about money.

I’m not sure any decision would have made a difference, so I regret them all. Which takes up a LOT of energy. What could I do if I let go of the regret? How much more energy would I have? When could I start the grand adventure?

The house, writing. Everything I’ve been wanting to do I put off until the long weekend. And then I don’t do them. Most of the time. The last long weekend, I took off an extra day like this time so it’s four days, not the standard three. I didn’t write a single thing. Nor did I clean my house, not even the junk table. Nor did I pay bills or order stuff I need. Nor even read much. Nor, Nor, Nor. Wait. There was some Ikea action, but I didn’t go until 5:30 that Monday night.

These long weekends get away from me, unless I have a solid plan of action. I re-did my closet on a long weekend. One day was for gathering supplies and prep; the next for painting; and that holiday Monday I put up shelves. They were long days, but damn it my closet is gorgeous!

I have no real plans for this weekend. I thought of finishing the self help addicts proposal. But honestly I don’t want to work that hard this weekend. Honesty. That’s the sample chapter for the self help addicts book. Which I started three years ago.  Being a self help addict I’m having a hard time getting it done. Every time I get to the details I stop myself. “I can’t do it”, “It’ll never get published so what’s the point?” “Nothing will ever come of all that work.”

Classic Addict. Let’s do The Work on this:

Nothing will ever come of it, so why bother.

Is that true? Yes

Is that absolutely true? God, woman, Yes!

How does that make you feel when you think that? Sucky. O.k. Powerless.

How does it make you feel if you let go of that thought? Hopeful.

But o.k. this is where I get lost in The Work. Shouldn’t I say I feel “Powerful”? But that’s not the word that came out. Hopeful is what I am. I hope that I can do it. But I don’t trust my abilities to get it done. I don’t believe I have the power to get it done. So, when I get to the Turnaround, using “hopeful” I end up saying:

“I’m hopeful that  something will come of this”

Which is just lame. Maybe I’ll take a look at it Labor Day weekend.

So I say once again I’ll get it all done on the weekend.

When I get up at 7:00am, or – oh dear god it’s so late I’ve ruined the whole day – 8:00 am as I did this morning, I’m panicked to get things done. What paint do I want for my bedroom? What fabric? When am I going to get someone to make the curtains for the office? When am I going to edit my sister’s book? When am I going to work on my novel? When am I going to work on the self help book? When am I going to write my next foodie article, let alone do the research for it? How many places can I eat at in one day without getting sick? I should go on a diet.

It’s just fucking insane!

You know what I really want to do on the weekends? On Saturday mornings I want to not feel guilty about sleeping until 8:00 fraking AM. That’s number one. Two, I want to have a leisurely breakfast, not eaten in front of a computer screen. I want to watch decorating shows on HGTV; the good ones don’t even start until about 10:00. That’s when they actually show decorating shows, and not real estate shows. I want to hang out on my couch and watch cooking shows on Food Network. Shows that show you how to cook things, not competitions or food facts. And I used to do that. I know I’ve done it in recent memory.

But the past few weeks have been different. If it’s after 7:00am, I immediately start kicking myself. Blaming myself for sleeping late. Why did I stay up late last night? I should have gone to bed so I could get up earlier. Well get up now Now NOW!!  You have to write. No! You have to workout, go to the park. No! You have to get to the grocery store before it’s too crowded. No! You have to go someplace you’ve been wanting or need to get to and you can only go on the weekend. NO!

I mean this self talk is brutal. It goes on like that as I brush my teeth and drink my water and make my coffee. Eat here or go somewhere?  Every option makes it harder. I simply don’t know what to do with my weekends so I end up not getting out until noonish every weekend, even when I do get up at 6:00am because I’m just paralyzed with the choices I need to make. So when I do leave the house I’m gone for 5, 6, 7 hours. It’s like a full work day. And I come home exhausted. Then on Sunday I’m bitter that I only have one day left and I’m dreading the new work week that’s just hours away and I don’t get much of anything done. And the lineup isn’t as good on HGTV or Food Network.

I need to re-think the weekend. I know there’s a lot to be done, but I’ve got a 30 year mortgage, so it won’t kill me if I don’t decorate everything right now. Or figure out the landscaping just yet. Getting someone else to mow the lawn isn’t a tragedy.

It’s the weekend I should enjoy it. Relax. Let go. Take the time to write this.

I just saw some friends of mine from college are now FB friends with someone else from college (you know how that works). I was looking at her public information. When she turned 40 about 3 years ago, she stopped smoking, lost weight, and wrote and published a novel. She’s a published author. Oh and by the way, she’s a lawyer in her day job.  I’m always torn when I see people like that. I want to be inspired. No, I am inspired, but I’m also bummed because I started the self help addicts proposal (and this blog) at about the same time. I haven’t completed anything.

I have a yogi tea tag that says “When the mind is backed by will, miracles happen.” Forget will. Where’s the time? That’s always my excuse: there’s no time. There’s always a little voice saying “but you’ll be so tired. You need some down time.” I talk to myself like I’m an 80 year old. Really I don’t need that much rest. It’s really just an excuse. My friends somehow got gifts to me for my birthday, by my birthday. My friends who have kids and careers, and already sent me gifts for Christmas and possibly housewarming, they somehow found time to send me gifts. Gifts I love, gifts I appreciate, gifts I’ll be using for years to come. They made time. And I thank them for it.

I do have time to accomplish all that I want to do. If I can obsess on interior decorating and Sarah’s House, I have time. If I can sit at my desk for hours not really doing anything, I have time. If I have the weekends I have time.

So. What can I accomplish now? I have to get to work.

When I lived in DC, my friend and I used to joke that we were 40 when we were 12. We were in our late 20s then, hoping to push 30 away with everything we had.  We were stunned by how quickly the 7, 8 years since college had passed.  We already felt time was running out and we were still looking for a clearly defined path.

I was old as a kid because I’d worried about everything. I was a “good girl” not because I was pious or a goody two shoes. I was good because unlike most young people I could see cause and effect, I could see the consequences of actions very clearly, and I knew those consequences could last a lifetime. I was deeply aware that once I made a choice, there was no going back, that was the road I were on, so I needed to choose very carefully. The fear of being on the wrong path paralyzed me, so I’ve often simply not made a choice.

I’ve been on that choiceless road for some time now, constantly wondering how I got here, where ever it is I am right now. I don’t mean this to be a sad post. It’s not. It’s not sad, because I’ve learned so much on the choiceless road. I’ve meandered around and done random things I never would have done if I were on some straight path to somewhere definite.

I’ve learned by now that no one is really on a direct path. You may think you are, but the Fates can, and often do, re-define the path you’re on, change it so it unrecognizable. I’ve had a chance, at this age, to let go of some of the fear of making choices. Some of it. I won’t bullshit you, a lot of it’s still there. But that little bit of freedom, that little space I’ve made in my psyche, in my heart can grow bigger. And that’s the whole point.

So, Happy Birthday to me. This is the age I was always meant to be.

In Obama’s sense of the word, I have no hope. Not “no hope” about the environment or the race or whatever political stuff out there.  I have no hope about my own life. Me as a person. I have no real hope that I’ll ever change. That I’ll ever reach any of my goals whether I’ve dared speak them aloud or f they’re still so unreasonable that I can’t even utter them to myself.  I don’t have hope that I have any capacity for change in any real way. I’ve read over 100 self help books and I’m still… this way. This passive, this passionless, this averse to risk. I have no capacity to say “I’m worth this. I’m worth more than this.”  I know that now. I’m aware of it.

What I do have is fantasy.

I live in a fantasy world where I can tap into everything I imagine. I try everything, and one success leads to another.  Success in everything, in work, in love, in body, in mind, in spirit. My fantasy world is decades old and I don’t remember when I didn’t run to it when something didn”t go well, or even when things did go well, I run to it to make things go weller.

I’m not sure if I want to destroy that fantasy world completely and utterly, or if I want to make it come true. I’ve come to the point where I have to do one or the other.

That’s bullshit. I’m not married and I don’t have kids. Yes I work a Forty, but single mothers with 3 kids under 5 get more done than I do. Don’t even get me started on the amount of time I waste every weekend. I don’t lack time. I lack focus.

I decided to re-start my 5:30 am writing schedule. I’d abandoned it when I closed on the house, but it’s really a good idea. I got so much written, even if not completed or finished. Last night I was thinking maybe I could even get up at 5:00am or 4:30 and give myself more time. Time.

I think my subconscious listened because it dared me to do it by waking me up at about 4:30 this morning. My subconscious, the real me, deep down wants me to get up and do it.  Write. Because that’s what I do in the morning, that’s when the critic is still pretty groggy and hasn’t gotten it together enough to shame me into not even trying.  My subconscious woke me up at 4:30 and then again at 5:00 to say “this can be done. Don’t listen to that jerk.”

I didn’t get up. For crying out loud I didn’t go to bed until 10:30!  But when my alarm went off at 5:30, I leaped out of bed. Seriously, I threw back the covers and stood up immediately. There was no sleepy look at the clock to figure out if I could sleep in just a little more.

I think this might be what motivation feels like. Yes, yes. Maybe even, I don’t know, enthusiasm? Hopefulness? If my subconscious dares me again tomorrow I think I might just get up.

That said, this is America, I am female, and I am fat, so weight is an issue that comes up constantly. Especially this time of year when you can’t go two inches without someone trying to sell you a workout or diet that they swear isn’t like any other workout you’ve ever tried (it is) and really isn’t a diet at all (again, it is).

How do these weight issues affect my desire to be a complete human being? It seems every self help book now mentions dieting and obesity now and it just annoys the shit out of me. This fundamentally physiological issue is trapped in the psychological hell so that anyone who’s fat is identified as someone who has serious issues, while the thin are apparently issue free. We know this isn’t true.

So here are a few of links from my other blog where I wrote about the constant pull to diet, how hunger is real and physiological, and after a comment, further explaining how hunger is real, and being a fat yogini.

I’d told myself I was doing it differently this year. I wasn’t doing the usual lose weight/get in shape resolution that I’ve done every year for the past oh 25 years or so. That unspoken resolution is always there no matter the time of year and no matter what else is going on in my life. I’m so sick of it. It’s as if all other achievements can, will and do, stem from the lose of weight. That said, I’m not exactly saying I’m abandoning it. I’ve already spent a few hours on Cathe’s website, and trying to figure out the right day to say goodbye to sugar for a few weeks.

This year I wanted other resolutions to take priority. I’d been thinking about resolutions and what they mean.  I think I, and many others, think of resolutions as goals. Lose 30, 40 (o.k. 50 lbs). Find a new job. Learn French. When I went to yoga New Year’s day (and was totally psyched about the practice of yoga), one of my teachers talked about resolutions as intentions instead of hard firm goals. But I’ve decided that resolutions are really all about practice. Surprise!

If you’ve read anything here lately you know I’m obsessed with the idea of practice. Even if practice itself escapes me. I find it overwhelming. There are too many things I want to practice, not enough time, blah blah blah. It’s all bullshit. I know this because I’m going to spend hours today reading on the couch and watching the last Dr. Who’s with David Tennant when I need to write new year’s cards (yeah), and pay bills and edit my sisters sermons. I’m probably not going to do any of it today. I could practice yoga for an hour or two and meditate for an hour or so, and write for… Wait. I’m writing now. Interesting. Don’t know what to make of that.

Anyway. I clearly shouldn’t make new year’s resolutions because I do not keep them. I need to be honest about that, so let me shout it out: I DO NOT KEEP NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS. So why do I continue to make them? And more importantly, how do to get to the goals or intentions or practices or whatever you want to call it that I want without keeping any kind of resolution. How do I change? It’s always about change, isn’t it?

Well here’s another question: Should I change? What if I don’t practice yoga or lose weight or meditate or write? Would my life be a horror?  Would it be exactly the same as it is now?  I’m not sure. I have so many ideas I don’t act on, so many plans that never get passed the “hey, I could try this” stage. Maybe I would have more time to do those things. Or maybe I would just watch Dr. Who.

The list is long, and tragic really. But what I can’t figure out is, why now? Is it because I was so proud of myself for getting the house. Huge accomplishment! Or is it just this time of year, a couple of months before my birthday. Every year another one comes around and every year, I’m stunned by how much my life hasn’t changed, how I’m still alone, how I’m still fat, how I’m still bored to death at work, how I’m still piling high reasons why I can’t even try to do things based mainly on the idea that I’m not good enough.

In my last post, I talked about the 3rd chakra and will and Anodea Judith herself responded! So exciting!  In her comment she said “Sounds like your Will energy turns you against you with negative self talk. Find out WHAT your will is, first, and be gentle and loving with yourself.”

What is my will? What do I want, really? I could say I want what everyone else wants: to be loved, to be happy.  But I’ve steadfastly avoided those. Just as I was making the decision to buy this house, I was reading old e-mails. I have no idea why. Maybe I was trying to survey my life here in Austin. In one from about 5 years ago was telling a friend about a date I had. The relationship went nowhere (obviously) but he was an extremely interesting, smart man, a writer studying psychology. On our second date, according to this e-mail, he just suddenly said “You don’t like anyone near you do you? whether emotionally or in physical proximity?”  I’d forgotten about that. I’d forgotten about him honestly, but when I read it again I knew it was true. Is that what it is? When I’m out and about in the world, do I project a vibe that says “Don’t love me. Don’t even try.”  When I’m safe and alone in my house “I’m so tired of being alone” as Al Green says.  Does being safe mean being alone to me? That’s a new, sad thing to say.

It’s frustrating. I’m about to turn 44 and I still don’t know what I want. Or do I know? And there’s just another part of me that forces me to give it up. I want to do everything, but I can’t do everything. I want to live everywhere, but I can’t live everywhere. I want to practice so many things, but there’s only time for one. Choose. That’s the constant rhythm of my life: wanting, but feeling incapable of getting. But isn’t that the rhythm of everybody’s life. Isn’t that what suffering is? Isn’t the cause of suffering wanting?

But Anodea (hope I can call her by her first name!) didn’t say find out what your will wants. She wrote “find out WHAT your will is.” I’m not sure I know the difference right now.