Five Resolutions, Kept and Failed, and One Great Poem

5 Resolutions Kept in 2013 (So Far)

1. Write every morning. Even if it’s only for an hour. Just sitting down and getting started leads to so much more productivity.
2. Schedule daily guilt-free reading time. Every afternoon I give myself at least an hour to not be a housekeeper, cook, wife, mother or business-owner; I let go of my responsibilities and find new aspects of myself in a book.
3. Eat better—If by “better” you mean richer and tastier. I’m currently reading Julia Child’s My Life in France, there’s no way you can read that book and be on a diet at the same time.
4. Drink less. Cocktail pounds are so frustrating. Happily, this has been an easy one so far.
5. Find one Great Poem per week. Well, it’s only been one week, so… check. You’ll find this week’s Great Poem below.

5 Failed Resolutions in 2013



1. Walk every day. I missed one day—ONE DAY—because of a Downton Abbey marathon. No regrets. It was totally worth it.
2. Finish one book before starting another. I think I’m going to have to give up on my idea of reading one book at a time. I have too many personalities to be a monogamous reader.
3. Say “yes” to the kids’ requests to play with them. Don’t get me wrong, I play with my kids, but I don’t think I can keep this resolution AND resolutions 1 and 2 (above) at the same time. I can say yes sometimes. It will just have to be enough.
4. Be more reliable on Twitter. Oh Twitter, why can’t you and I get along?
5. Clean a little bit of the house every day instead of going on a cleaning binge every two (or three, or four) weeks. Ha! Who was I kidding with this one?!

This week, while the kids have been off school and we’ve all meandered through in that residual “vacation” mode have been easy. It’s next week, when school, work, and after-school activities start up again that will be the real challenge. It’s easy to be a free spirit when your responsibilities are cut in half. Next week I go back to the writing/mother double-shift, and that’s when things get challenging.  Just the thought of it had me turning to Anne Sexton for comfort and commiseration, and it was in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton that I found this week’s Great Poem:

Her Kind by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.