The marriage YOU are in

The blog world was rocked this week by the announcement from Heather and Jon Armstrong that their marriage is currently in a trial separation.  Twitter exploded, hundreds of comments were left on their respective blogs and some of my friends who are readers got together on a hangout so we could process together.  Tack on to that all the celebrity break ups that are consistently happening all around us, books featuring the end of a marriage as a main plot point, and the hardest of all, the end of the marriages of people you know and love in real life, and marriage seems pretty pointless.  In the past, I’ve felt derailed by the hurt all around me.  Sure Hubs and I are mostly great now, but what happens to us when we have kids, the next time we move, in 30 years, or when our marriage faces challenges I haven’t even anticipated?

What has really helped me to get past all of those worries is one simple fact (which can be repeated like a mantra):  our marriage is OUR marriage.  Our marriage is not Jon and Heather’s marriage or the marriage of anyone close to me, no matter how much I admire what they seemed to have.  Because only the two people in the marriage can really know why it works or doesn’t work, I can’t let the end of anyone else’s marriage derail me because as long as I know what’s going on in my marriage, I’m doing the best I can.  And there are always times when marriages end because one person did something, but I think it’s more often that people grow apart and there are convincing reasons not to try to grow back together.  So as long as Hubs and I keep working on it, we’ll be fine. (I think).

Easy does it

Inspired by several bloggy friends looking back at their resolutions from 2011 while looking forward to 2012, I went back to read my first post of 2011.  What I felt was not inspired, awesome, or proud, but lame, lame, lame.  Looking through my resolutions, I can see that I’ve made significant progress in the teaching, fitness, and love categories, and medium progress bringing creativity into my life, but the science and money aspects were veritable flops.  It is so hard for me to see past the flops, plus our house is a post-Christmas mess, and these two issues combined with my body readjusting to not eating cookies every day (I JUST WANT SUGAR) have rendered this first week of 2012 somewhat challenging.

Yesterday, I absolutely lost it in lab listening to new tunes suggested by dooce because I heard a really apt message in the lyrics:

Do what’s easy, steal every red cent from the wishing well
Smoke cigarettes till your chest rattles like hell
Just do what’s easy
Waste every evening, don’t ever read and don’t ever right
Never leave home and get drunk every night
Just do what’s easy
Hate completely, let every wall feel the force of your fist
Forget your debts cause forgiveness exists
Just do what’s easy

If I could “finish” all my resolutions from 2011, what was I thinking making them?  How can I expect to grow emotionally, spiritually, intellectually if I’m not reaching for things that are hard?  Even though I tend toward breaking down in sobs every time I read something like this, and failure at the science bench still sends me screaming to blogland, where I can hideout and read about royal fashion, babies being born, and baking beautiful cakes, I am now pretty sure I’m on a path that is right for me.  Maybe acknowledging how hard it is and getting to a place where quitting is an option I know I’m not going to pursue was enough for 2011.

How did you do on your 2011 resolutions?