This is my first contribution to Macro Monday, a photo meme that my friend Dawn is playing, but I think started at Lisa’s Chaos. This was taken today in my front yard, a camellia, sleeping through the winter.
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This blog is about the best parts. Natural disasters like the one happening in Haiti belong in some other blog, about the worst parts. The “best” lies in how we respond as human beings. Nations are mobilizing to help the survivors. Without immediate aid, the survivors will fall to dehydration, malnutrition, typhoid, wound infections, etc that are the real killers in these disasters, and many of these deaths can be prevented. I bow to the heroic men and women who drop everything and go to these areas to provide hands on help. I’m not one of those. But if I can’t or won’t give of my time and talent, and can at least share of my treasure. The two links that follow are organizations that rate the integrity and effectiveness of charities. I am much more comfortable in giving if I know the money is going to the right places. Maybe this will encourage you, too.
My body got a bit soft last year. I think I exercised less last year than I have for most years of my life! It had to do with moving from Ohio to North Carolina. The relocation was a year long project. Much of the year was spent sorting and packing, traveling back and forth, starting a new job, selling and buying a house, unpacking, and getting to know our new surroundings. It was all great stuff, but it really restricted my exercise time. So this year I will get back on my usual track. I’d like to exercise every other day, on the average. I figure, since my job gives me as many days off as I work, I should be able to do it, right? Plus, I love it. And I resolve to eat more Cheeseburger Happy Meals! How else am I going to have a body like that!
I spent a lot of my life being a people pleaser. That’s not a good thing. It’s a sign of a codependent person. It implies that there is a strong neediness, in this case a need for love and acceptance. It sets a person up for a codependent relationship where one is the giver and the other a taker, fertile ground for growing resentments. At it’s extreme, being a people pleaser is ugly. No one likes a spineless, wishy-washy person. I like to think I was not that bad. I think of myself as a pretty capable person, so my flavor of people pleasing was trying to impress others. I needed the approval of others, and I avoided conflict, even if I had to give up something that I really should have stood for. That’s when people pleasing is harmful to ones own self, when you give up your own wants/needs/values just to please the other person so they will love you. I am well beyond all that now. I am comfortable in my own skin. I can take good care of myself, in every way. I have a good sense of my own set of rights and wrongs, and I am true to them today. I don’t need everyone to like me. I can say no. I can identify what I want and what I need. It doesn’t mean I’m selfish. Quite to the contrary, I have always been and still am a giving person. But I no longer let others take advantage of me. And this leads me to the whole point of this post. It is a New Year’s Resolution post. I have realized that I no longer need to impress others. I am what I am, take it or leave it. Take me or leave me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care how I am, how I act. What I have also realized is that the only person I want to impress is my own self! I want to be the best that I can be in every way. I want to catch myself doing things well. Really well. This should be a fun resolution! This video is of a 2003 performance at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, very close to where we now live. 
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