Trapped in Insanity: A Review 2013

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Albert Einstein

Twenty-Thirteen was supposed to be the year of my New Normal, instead it became my year trapped in the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting the different results. My mother died on Thursday, November 29, 2012, one week after Thanksgiving and one day before the end of NaNoWriMo. My world fell apart, fell into chaos, I was truly alone for the first time in my life. I did not know what to do with myself or how to respond, so I continued doing things the way I had always done them and that was a mistake because wanted different results.

Think back over the year, between November 29, 2012 and November 29, 2013, I realize that it was too early in my mourning process to expect a new normal. That was my Year of Magical Thinking1, my year of withdrawing into the fantasy that she was not really dead and would be walking back into my life demanding that we go down to the Culinary Union so that she could start receiving her pension check.2 I wrote poems and blog entries about her death, I am sure that I still lived in the fantasy that she was still alive.

Thirteen months after my mother's death, I am ready to accept the fact that she is has left this "vale of tears"3 and can no longer be with me physically. I know she is in a better place, that she is in paradise walking beneath the Tree of Life, and surrounded by her friends and family. That knowledge does not make it any easier for me to continue living with out her, but I will continue live because to do anything else would be an insult to her and the 91 years she lived on this earth.

In 2014, I have to make changes in the way I do things. I have to look at my goals and plan how to achieve them instead of just setting them (as if they were just resolutions) and giving up or forgetting them when I start having difficulties accomplishing them. I know accomplishing my word count goal will cause me difficulty and stress because I am have problems achieving it on a consistent basis now. I have had difficulty achieving this goal for the past thirteen months, as well as many months before that. I do not want to lower the goal from 2,000 words per day because, several years ago, I lowered the goal from 5,000 to 2,000 words because I was and am more consistent in writing 2,000 words per day then I am 5,000.

The question now is how do I accomplish the 2,000 words per day goal on a consistent basis. By "consistent basis" I mean at least six days out of seven and preferably daily. Once I accomplish this goal seven days for three months straight I can raise the goal to 2,500 or 3,000 words per day. It is getting past the 2,000 words daily that is causing the problem. Perhaps I need to look at the days I accomplish the goal and compare my actions to the days I do not accomplish it once I find out what the differences are then I can deal with directly. I know that once I solve the issue with the word count goal then I will have solved the problems I have in achieving my other goals.

I am determined that 2014 will be a new normal for me. I cannot go another year living the insanity reflected in the quote at the beginning of this essay. A year of insanity is enough, I want to get on with my life and starting enjoying myself again. I want to feel that I am living the new normal that I thought was going to happen in 2013.

Footnotes
1  See The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
2  Part of a dream I had about my mother.
3  http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/vale+of+tears