This blog wasn’t exactly a new year’s resolution; it just so happened that I started blogging again at the beginning of a new year and was somewhat resolved to blog every day. Like any pedestrian chump, though, I fell off after about a month.

Sad!

The trick is, I’ve learned, not to beat yourself up over resolutions that you make. Buddhists always say “Everyone suffers,” but if I could add a western spin to that idea, I’d say, “Everyone fails.”

It’s just true. No matter what you do, how often you do it, how good you are at it, or whether or not that thing is your passion, you will have setbacks and you will eventually face failure.

Imagine two people who make a resolution to go jogging every morning. Both people, being regular people, will eventually fail at this resolution in some wayshaperform. It just happens — they have a sick day or they forget to set an alarm or the ground is covered in ice — the world conspires against them and they can’t jog.

Womp womp! But how do they react to this failure; that’s the question.

Person A says to themselves, “My perfect record is tainted! I’d planned to run every day, but now that I’ve failed, what’s the use? Everything is horrible and life is a crap chute!” So they stay home and feel bad about their failure because it wasn’t perfect.

Person B says, “Oh, I couldn’t jog yesterday. Whoops!” and then goes jogging anyway.

I have, unfortunately, always put myself in the former category. I wish I wasn’t there, but here we are. I beat myself up for failing at goals that I have set for myself and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Other than to keep plugging away at this blog as if nothing happened. Because, ultimately, nothing did happen.