Angel Dragonpants

So for anyone planning to celebrate the one night of the year you allow yourself to think about growth, there's a few considerations I found important. 2019 was my year. I finally had a grasp on how to live with schizophrenia, my relationship with Jake seemed promising enough, I got certified to teach English as a second language, I had switched to vaping and was tapering my nicotine intake, things were great. But then, as Bo Burnham put it, the funniest thing happened. A lot of work on myself got undone by pandemic isolation. In late 2021 I did something that only someone would do when devoid of hope. I made a new years resolution. My resolution was to work on my mental health. As ambiguous as that was, I did exactly that. This has been the only year I kept to a new years resolution. I don't even remember what other resolutions I've ever made but I know I forgot them soon after making them. Keep your resolution ambiguous, keep it something that will take a year, roughly, and most importantly make it something that would take a year to fail. Quitting nicotine, drinking, doughnuts, whatever. You might be too hungover to remember your resolution until after you've already failed. That's not to say you can't want to quit nicotine. You absolutely should. I know, it's a lot easier said than done unless, unless you're emphysemic or have popcorn lung anyways. If you're going to quit nicotine, don't treat a relapse as the end of your efforts. Same with any other addiction, really. If it's something that takes a year to accomplish and a year to fail, then a teensy setback here and there isn't gonna be the end of your quest. On top of accounting for setbacks, ambiguity allows for flexibility too. If for some reason you can't do one thing towards your goal, you can seek an alternative, or if an alternative comes about that you see more productive, you can focus on that. A grounding exercise during psychosis led me back to Buddhist practices I had learned as a teen and then studying Buddhism further over the last few months. Not entirely surprising, when you consider how much modern psychiatry has learned from Buddhism, but it's definitely not what I had in mind when I decided I'd work on my mental health back in January. I don't know why I thought the path should be clear when I've wanted to get to a place I'd never been, but I know better now. Despite the path never being clear, I kept my resolution. My mental health is seemingly in check, I'm spending at least as much time looking inward as I do concerning myself with politics or drama, my relationship with Jake has never been better, my confidence is through the roof, and I can honestly say I'm the happiest I've ever been in my damn life. And that's not a good thing. I'm only 31, I've peaked far too soon o_o