As 2019 Begins...

Happy 2019 - a year for more watercolour birdies!

A friend asked me whether I'd made any resolutions for the new year. As I never keep them there isn't really any point - why build in failure before the year even begins? Besides, I've already given up the things that generally feature in New Year's Resolutions - smoking and drinking - my weight is more or less where I want it to be and I'm mostly happy with the person I am.

I can live with the level of mess in my house and the lack of organisation. Ditto money. So don't make promises to yourself that you can't keep! Gosh - can I be getting older and wiser (or at least, more realistic)?

Then I thought about it some more. Bugger. There are some things I'd like to have a go at this year. Here they are, divided into "more" or "less" sections:

MORE

• learning - try to learn something new each day (that sounds wanky, doesn't it? But it's fitting for a New Year's resolution, right? They're often pie-in-the-sky wanky...) In any case, learning new stuff may stave off brain deterioration as I get older. And face it, I spent enough years burning as many brain cells as I could. I need all the poor struggling ones that are still left!
• painting (or drawing) - art in general, really. Maybe get started on the mosaic I've been threatening to do. And poetry - more poetry! Words are fabulous. Enter a short story competition. Whoa, take a step back - actually write a story first. to enter into a short story competition. That's better. Aaaaaaand - planning for the 2020 art calendar is already underway - that's a good start. So far, so good!
• salad (no point resolving to cook more as I loathe cooking and would be dooming myself to immediate failure!) Can I at least TRY to get excited at the prospect of salad....thinking thinking thinking... nope. No excitement - just do it!
• saying 'No' - it will ensure I go into 2020 less tired and less cross with myself.
• anger - at the right things!

"Mollymawk" - watercolour/mixed media and original words © Sue Hines 2018

LESS

• plastic
• pessimism
• procrastination - that will definitely make the "more" list easier. No more last minute rush to get the last painting finished to get to the printer for the next calendar, ok?
• stuff - I will turn 60 this year, and ought to be culling, not collecting; streamlining, not swelling (confession: I started this one already, with beneficiaries being the Community Op-Shop and the Sea Shepherd garage sale.) Good start, Hinesey. Big tick for you 🗹
• arseholes - (oops, bad grammar - that should be "fewer", not "less"). Begone, all those who would bring me down, make me sad or fearful, frustrated or feeling inadequate. I am perfectly adequate, thank you very much!

Onwards and upwards.

 

Happy 2019!

*blink* and another year’s gone…

 

This year - oops, last year – has disappeared into that irretrievable void that we call The Past. Gone. Kaput. It no longer exists. The only thing that keeps it alive, for good or ill, is memory – aided by the media and all those ‘the year that was’ photos and videos. There are many things I'd like to forget - like the fact I only rode the motorbike half a dozen times, or that I suffered an inordinate amount of joint pain. That I became fat from a deadly combination of prednisolone, red wine and late-night snacks. That I cleaned so many dunnies my arms nearly dropped off. That Kate's beautiful cat, Aldwyn, was laid to rest in my front garden.

There are also many things I would like to remember about 2013, though. Singing with the Mallacoota Community Choir; joining Mallacoota's rockin'est ukulele girl-band, the Strumaleles; learning watercolour painting in the U3A art class; making some wonderful new friends in my adopted hometown, reconnecting with nature and rediscovering the joy of gardening. Memory is a double-edged sword, isn't it?

This year is what it is and all that it is going to be because of all those bits and pieces - good and bad - of last year and the year before and the year before that, all the way back to forever. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything is interconnected. The kneebone's connected to the -- you know how it goes.

On the bad side, I guess that’s why Campbell Newman and his VLAD-loving cronies are still jack-booting about and terrorising Queensland, and why Mallacoota's beautiful Bastion Point is still ‘under reconstruction’ (Grrr). It’s why Tony Abbott and his secretive government are hiding boats and denying climate change and selling our precious environment to the mega-rich, while simultaneously trampling all over the most vulnerable people in our society. 

Seeing as memory doesn’t actually seem to be teaching us anything as a society (like how NOT to let governments get too much power), is it actually worth having? Is it a blessing or a burden?

I sometimes ponder life without the double-edged sword of Memory. How is it for Basil, I wonder, whose life is lived from day to day, and who doesn’t seem to worry about anything at all, ever? He seems pretty happy, actually. Here he is, sitting on a nice warm rock in the cat palace and looking very handsome:

Photo by Kate Berry

 

Poop. I hadn’t intended being philosophical. I had resolved not to think too much this year, in fact, because thinking too much can be such a downer. Clearly this resolution went the way of just about every other resolution, ever. I’m doomed to think and think. But I may have found a partial solution.

I read a sappy thing on Facebook the other day – one of those True Stories designed to tug at the heartstrings – and one line really stood out for me, and created the foundation for a resolution I hope I will be able to keep in 2014.

‘Don’t put the key to your happiness in anybody else’s pocket.’

Wow. That really blew me away, as I realised, in my over-thinking way, that I do exactly that. I do it a lot. And it never occurs to me that this is a choice I make – a ridiculous, self-defeating choice that hands over the power over my precious happiness to other people, some of whom I don’t even like very much! How very empowering for them! 

2014, then, is going to be the year that I keep the key to my happiness safely in my own pocket. I love my own little world, with its ukulele, its Basil, its birds, its watercolours and its lovely work-in-progress garden. I love the friends and family in it. I love doing my own thing in my little house in this beautiful, tiny little town. Obnoxious people, bosses and governments may have the power to irritate, much like this summer's persistent flies, but I will not give them the power to make me feel less worthy or less happy than I deserve to be.

Onwards and upwards, and Happy New Year!