Personal reflections and New Year's resolutions

For what it’s worth, I’ve been sitting on this blog post for almost a week now. I’ve written and re-written it several times, though I’m not entirely sure why. But tonight just seemed like a good a time as any to let it out. So here it goes.

I often debate with myself whether or not to muddle (what I believe to be) my impersonal blog of social/political commentary with my own personal musings pertaining to my life. When I started (founded?) this blog, I felt like I needed an outlet for my political and social observations. It was also a time in my life when I felt like I had sufficient outlet for my emotions and thus did not necessitate the use of this blog for my own emotional health. Plus, I always tend to shy away from sharing my personal feelings for a few reasons.

First, I'm not so presumptuous as to believe that anyone cares about what issues may be going on in my life. As much as I might like to, when it gets down to brass tacks, I really don't have a whole hell of a lot I can complain about. Nobody likes a whiner. Secondly, I've always felt like I wasn't proficient at emoting. It's a strange paradox that I can explain the idea of supply side economics or the North Korean missile crisis, but when it comes to my personal feelings toward other people, my IQ drops 30 points and my vocabulary mainly consists of "or something," "I don't know," and "nevermind." And finally, it's just a basic defense mechanism. Putting my personal feelings out for everyone to see makes me vulnerable. So, the less vulnerable the better. Nevermind the fact that I'd likely have a heart attack at the age of 29.

I tried to at least take this blog semi-seriously under the premise that random people would be reading it, but let's be honest...who am I kidding? There's a total of about four to five people who regularly read this, and I know all of you. I don't really see my readership plummeting if I were to talk about the things crawling around my own brain every now and then.

Over the last seven months or so, the "poles" of my mind have been trading places. An outlet for my political musings has opened up in the form of the Ex@|\/|iner. Meanwhile, that aforementioned "sufficient outlet for my emotions" has closed. But such is life, so moving on.

I’ve never been much of one for New Year’s resolutions. For the last several years of my life, the start of a new year has been accompanied by a fresh batch of stress and obligations that made it difficult enough just to get by, let alone find the time or the energy to focus on my own self-consciousness.

But with the change of scenery and with my obligations for the next six months largely similar to those of the last, I feel like I finally have the opportunity to put those aspects of my life on autopilot while I focus on various parts of myself that I’ve been meaning to improve.

My broad goal for 2006 is to take better care of myself, both physically and emotionally, perhaps even spiritually. To this end, I’ve been slowly getting myself on a healthier diet, which, much to my chagrin, involves a substantial amount of food preparation on my part — I’ve heard the process referred to as ‘cooking.’ It’s rather foreign as of yet, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

I’ve also been slowly getting back into the habit of regular physical exertion, a.k.a. exercise. The 3-4 mile a day walk to work and back just isn’t cutting it anymore. I won’t go into much detail, but suffice it to say that I’m trying to get into shape…or at least a shape other than rectangular.

On the emotional side, I’m going to make a marked effort to curb my emotionally masochistic tendencies. That is to say, I’m going to try to stop expending time, effort and emotion on the people in my life who do not want or deserve it, and try to do a better job on expending it on those that do.

I have a strange habit of vying for the attention and affection of people that are wholly uninterested in giving it to me. There was a time when I would base my self worth on such interactions and end up being frequently upset and disillusioned when I realized that I was not as high on these people’s lists of priorities as they were on mine. As upset and disillusioned as I might have been at the time, however, I was never surprised.

I’ve always had a knack for figuring people out. That is to say, I think I can predict, with a fair amount of confidence, how someone will react in a given situation. I think this comes from years of keeping my mouth shut in social situations. With my aversion to public speaking, whenever I’m placed in a large social situation, often times I will say little, if anything, opting instead to observe.

Over time, I like to think that I’ve developed a keen sense of observation and thus I can detect subtle changes in mannerisms, vocabulary, even typing style — depending on how well I know the person — which makes me quite sensitive in noticing other people’s mood changes.

What I lack, however, is an understanding of why certain people act the way they do. While I may be proficient at predicting behavior, I’m deficient in the ability of explaining it. As much as I deride others for being self-centered and self-important, I feel like I have my own shortfalls in this regard. Meaning, when someone reacts to a certain situation in a way that I wouldn’t, I genuinely don’t understand the motives behind it. I see myself as a normal, logical and (at least in most ways) decent person, so when someone acts in a way I would define as unusual, illogical or indecent, I have a difficult time digesting it. Maybe I should work on that next year, as well. Some people just suck, and I suppose I should get used to it.

Another major resolution I have for 2006 is to intensely deal with my speech. All of you know full well that I stutter, and I often feel like I talk about it more than I should. As much as I try to inform people that I stutter, I often still feel ashamed about it, and thus it becomes one of those things that everyone knows about but is afraid to mention. I'm trying to change this.

To this end, for the last couple of months I've been meeting with a stuttering support group in the D.C. area, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. It's more refreshing than I ever thought it would be to associate with people that know exactly what it feels like to open your mouth without being sure what's going to come out of it.

During one of our meetings, we came to a consensus that 95% of people simply don't care that we stutter. It just so happens that I'm in the other 5%. I'm trying to change this as well. It's always been difficult for me to admit to others that I stutter unless I absolutely had to, mostly because I was afraid they wouldn't understand even if I told them. Thus, I'm going to do my best to make as many people understand as possible. And since there's no better place to start that than here, I want all of you to know that you can feel free to ask me anything about stuttering that you might want to know. Actually, I would appreciate it if you did.

For what it's worth, I'm also planning to take part in a fluency class next semester at the University of Maryland. I've heard great things about the course, and for once I'm actually optimistic that it can make a difference. I guess we'll see.

I'm also hoping to become more involved with my religion/spirituality. This is likely to involve quite a bit of personal revealations, as being on my own provides me quite a bit of time to pick my own brain. For too long, my religious leanings have been heavily influenced by other people in my life. Now that I don't have anyone to answer to -- anyone mortal, anyway -- I have the chance to define myself religiously, which is both liberating and terrifying at the same time. More on this later. Maybe.

At any rate, my plan for 2006 isn't to become I different person, just a better one. If I end up coming back to Atlanta...though the reasons to do so are dwindling...hopefully I'll be in better shape, physically and mentally, and speaking at least a little more fluently.

Anyway...I think I just remembered why I don't ever talk about my personal life. There are no guarantees that this post will make it to the end of the day.