Me and Honeybadger

Here's a statistic for you:  90% of people fail to keep their New Year's resolutions. I just made that statistic up, but I bet it's close.  That would hardly be a shocker since we do it every year and still pick the same thing to try the next year.  I figure probably you've spent several sleepless nights wondering how I'm doing with mine and since I want you to be well rested, it seemed like the six month mark is a good time to update you.  Here's the original post on my New Year's resolution to trust my own gut this year: http://strangerlori.blogspot.com/2011/12/resolved.html and after I re-read it, I realized it was more appropriate that my adherence to my 2012 motto, "I don't give a %^$* what you think" was really probably the more important other half of it, so here's that link too:  http://strangerlori.blogspot.com/2012/01/might-be-time-for-new-motto.html.  You don't need to go back and read it to follow along, but there it is.

To be honest, I am certain that "I don't give a $%^@ what you think" will never be an instinctive sort of statement for me both because I've spent 40 years letting your gut take the place of mine and because I just like knowing people like me.  I'm okay with that, but it's been so important for me to at least try the phrase on for a while and I'm getting pretty good with it. You've no idea how completely icky it feels to press "PUBLISH" on a post that means ANYONE ON THE WHOLE WIDE INTERNET can now know that I fell down the stairs or that I acted a fool at the circus (not giving you the links to those, you will have to work for it).  

Here's how my writing process usually goes:  Finish a post, re-read, fret, check spelling, fret, take a shower, make changes, fret, finally say, "I don't give a $#% what they think, because this is me and they don't have to read it and I'm okay if they don't like me", go downstairs, re-read, make this worried eeek face:

and then hit PUBLISH and remind myself I'm okay.  And then immediately run into someone at Walmart whom I barely know who says "I read your blog" and die a little. The good news is that my response time to actually landing on my motto is much shorter than it used to be.

But writing to you is not the only arena of concern in my life. I painted some birds I liked and some I wasn't proud of and decided that I didn't ask anyone to like them or purchase them and folks can go paint their own damn birds if they want. That felt pretty good.  Some times the same thing goes with what I wear and what I do with my time.

So at the 6 month mark of letting my gut be my guide I can tell you that I'm getting pretty comfortable in the driver's seat of my own life and so is everyone around me.  Just like everyone else, though, I need the occasional reminder to let my motto be a guiding principle in my decisions. We still have 6 more months to go and I'm not gonna be in the 90%!

But inspiration often comes when you aren't searching for it, and while I typically avoid watching the little Youtube video posts on FB (I'm just too busy with the stalking parts of FB), thankfully my friend reminded me of the Honeybadger video circulating and you can't be surprised that I now have aligned myself with this hateful (and foul-mouthed) creature.
 Note to mom and Olivia:  you are not allowed to hear the sort of language contained in this video so YOU STOP right here. I will know if you didn't.  

So I'm not quite to Honeybadger status, but I'm way closer (and hoping not to cross the line into eating cobra). Check back with me in 6 months, though, because anything can happen.