personal responsibility

I've recently been thinking a lot about personal responsibility -- and trying to define for myself what it means to me, where I have control in my life and where i truly lack control or impact. This has been an interesting and at times intense exercise -- and the results of my analysis have shown that pretty much I'm responsible for it all. :) That's both the good news and the bad news. It's the good news because I'm pretty proud of a lot of my accomplishments to date -- I've worked for some amazing companies, done great work, built cool things. Personally, I'm extremely lucky to be so well-loved -- I have incredible friends and family and i'm surrounded by special, unique and not-so-unique people who bring joy, intellectual challenge and love into my life daily. I've also got a great home and enough material possessions to never want again. Although, shamelessly, I do.

These are the upsides. The downside is that i have to own my failures, my distractions, my bad decisions. And that's been where the thinking and analysis began. I think we all struggle with life, with achieving our goals. I'm at point lately where a lot of things that I had wanted to accomplish, I've done. Travel the world? Well, it's always going to be a work in progress (I still have to go to Africa and Antartica!!!) but i've traisped across chunks of it. Buy a home? Done that. Get my dream job? Yep. Be in love? Yes and awww. Then there all of the things I didn't plan for, that have caused me unneeded pain. Making bad choices at work or in relationships, not being focused and generally living my life on a chaotic edge of cyclical successes and failures. It's been like a roller coaster. Which has been exciting, but not always satisfying, and the down bits have caused the high's of the up-bits to feel extreme at times. These days I'm aiming for more balance, and that's brought me to thinking about personal responsibility. I think i've been scapegoating the fact that I own my destiny. That there may be no such thing as destiny --- and whether there is or isn't, doesn't matter. It's fundamentally up to me to make good choices, and correct the bad ones -- not just by taking ownership of their negativity, but by correcting them by changing course. This has been hard, because, well, a change in direction usually requires some sort of idea on where you want to go and be...

anyways, that's what's on my mind. right now. so i'm going to be responsible. That's my 2006 theme. It's a mid-year NYE resolution. I promise.