New Years Resolutions

The big question:
Whom do I want to become?
What is she like?
Is she brave, fearless?
Does she learn new things and practice until she is better?
How does she differ from whom I am becoming today?
Maybe she makes and eats real meals, after years of living from lunch bags and car snacks?
What does she do for an income?
What does she do to make that into a life?
Who and how does she help others?

One thing for certain is that she is in control of herself, but takes her circumstances in stride.
She accepts her humanity, and trys to improve and stretch it.
She accepts her body, and trys to take good care of it, build it, stretch it, use it, enjoy it.
She believes there are no limits, when given enough time and work.
She accepts that everything is a work in process, including herself.

The Birth of a Paper

Writing a Seminar paper is a lot like giving birth to a baby.
Going into it, I get an urge to clean, only this time, not the kitchen, it is shelves of the library. I scour them for everything I can find related to my topic. I waddle out of there, my hands low, wrapped around the big belly of books that reach to my chin.

When the labor of writing sets in, there are lots of deep breathes, moans, squeaks. Inbetween expulsions of words, I get up and pace, looking for nourishment to fuel my task, to stretch my sore muscles. My back aches, my hips are sore. Sleep comes in fits. No diversion works for long, back to the pushing, relentless and seemingly never-ending, until in full bloom the paper emerges, full of the red squiggly lines, mucus of misspelled words and grammar mistakes. It needs to be cleaned off. It needs to be wrapped in the proper format.
Then exhausted, I sleep, snuggled up to dreams of concepts that came to life as the paper's ideas were born.