It’s officially February. If you remember the study I cited at the beginning of the year, most of you with New Year’s resolutions have already let them go by the wayside.

How about those of you who picked a theme instead? How is your theme coming along?

I ran out and bought three books on organization. And all of them sit, partially skimmed. If I looked around myself, at home or at work, and said, “OK, organize it” then I wouldn’t know where to start. It would overwhelm me.

You don’t have to do it all at once.

That’s the great thing about a theme – you have all year to work on it. I don’t have to get it all done right now. Every time something is disorganized, my boyfriend likes to say with a smile, “It’s the year of organization!” And I like to say right back, “It’s the YEAR of organization – not the JANUARY of organization.”

The problem with resolutions is that once you’ve missed a few days of working out or had a few too many trips to McDonald’s you feel like you’ve failed and you quit. The theme doesn’t let me quit. It’s all year, baby! If I don’t fold the laundry for two weeks, it’s OK. I’ll get there. It’s only January.

Your theme is probably a huge honkin’ goal. Break it down. Pick a small portion of it and make it the theme for that month.

Here’s how the Year of Organization looks for me:

January: Home Office
February: Kitchen
March: Car
April: Bedroom
May: Outdoors
June: Laundry room
July: Living room
August: Bathrooms
September: Hallways & closets
October: Bedroom closet
November: TBD
December: TBD

Plan to fall behind… a little.

I’m allowing myself leniency and flexibility in the last two months. I know that I’ll find behind, and I also know that I’ll find something I didn’t expect that needs work. This takes a little pressure off of me – I won’t be doubling up on things because I forgot about this or that, and my year isn’t so full that if life gets in the way (as it so often does) I can take a break.

Don’t forget the little things.

Overarching all of this are the intangibles of organization – organizing my time, schedule, finances and expectations. I work on those things every month. I don’t work hard at them. I keep up the work I did last year (the Year of Finances), making a budget and sticking to it every two weeks. I keep a calendar with important dates, etc. That’s not the sort of stuff that can be done in a month, nor can it wait for a particular month to be scheduled for it.

It works!

The interesting thing I’ve found just by organizing my home office in January, is that when my physical space is organized those intangible organization problems are lessened. Rationally I know that if my documents are where I can find them, then things will go faster. But I think it’s interesting that my work schedule feels less cluttered and claustrophobic because my office is not cluttered and claustrophobic.

There just might be something to this organization thing!

Stay tuned for an update on January’s mini-theme, the Home Office. I’ll be posting photos.

Photo credit: Sarah and Mike… Probably via Flickr

From my latest contribution to Untemplater.

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen describes his adult relationships with women by referencing a quote attributed to Groucho Marx: “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.”

That pretty much characterizes a lot of my friends’ love lives, too. Every time I sit down to coffee with a girlfriend or dial up one of my long-lost wingmen, I hear the sound of heads beating against a proverbial wall. He won’t commit. She treats you, your time and your interests with indifference. And Woody Allen pops into my head.

Why is it that we want the people who don’t want us?

This is an oversimplified question, of course. Because if you’ve ever had a close friend in one of these relationships, or god help you, you’ve been in one of these relationships, then you know it’s not that easy.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me – he just doesn’t believe in monogamy.

It’s not that she doesn’t care about me. She says she cares about me. Her personality is just naturally indifferent.

Well, he’s just really busy right now, being a (start-up owner/lawyer/musician/pilot/insert self-important time-consuming profession here).

She likes me. I can tell she likes me, but she’s just flighty.

These are the rationalizations of those who suffer from Woody Allen Syndrome (WAS), a case of almost subconscious-level low self-esteem issues when it comes to the opposite sex.

Naturally, those who don’t suffer from WAS will ask, “What’s wrong with the guys/gals who actually like you?”

Nothing. Nothing at all. WAS sufferers simply never get that far. Consider the odds: You’re bound to run into more potential significant others who aren’t right for you than those who are. In my mind, it’s like a 80-20 ratio of non-matches to matches, depending on your pickiness and temperament.

Here’s how you banish Woody Allen from your dating life.

Stop waiting for things to change.

Listen to me now, fellow WAS sufferers: they will never be more interested in you than they were at the beginning. Yes, every good relationship will grow and you will be more and more in love with that person, but that starts from a pretty high level of interest from the get-go. It doesn’t start from indifference and grow to strong affection.

Stop doing the same thing over and over.

I hope by now that we all know the definition of insanity. If not, click here. It amazes me that we haven’t figured out that this applies to our romantic lives as well. If you keep picking up douche bags in bars, STOP GOING OUT TO BARS as your romantic strategy. If you keep dating people who don’t really seem that into you, STOP DATING PEOPLE who aren’t that into you. If internet dating isn’t working, then STOP. It’s not going to change. The odds of the right guy popping up after the first month is slim-to-none.

Go where the nice, caring people are.

My therapist told me to start volunteering so I could meet a nice guy. I volunteered and guess what? I met a nice guy who actually wanted to be in a relationship with me. Do something different, even if it seems improbable that it will actually work. It doesn’t have to be a soup kitchen or an animal shelter. Do something that utilizes your skills and is something you genuinely care about. I volunteered to do social media strategy for a political group, which also helped my resume.

Don’t settle for someone who won’t join your club.

As cheesy as this sounds, you need to know your worth. And you are worthy of a significant other who thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread. Imagine there’s a You Fan Club. Would he join? Would she be the president? If he or she wouldn’t even show up to a You Fan Club mixer because they have other stuff to do, then 86 ‘em. You deserve someone who is your #1 fan. And that doesn’t make them somehow less desirable. It makes them smart.

…

Check out the great comments on this post at Untemplater! Click here to read the post at Untemplater.

I was invited by the excellent folks over at Untemplater to blog about relationships. If you don’t know about Untemplater yet then you’re missing out! Untemplater is a blog network dedicated to showing the grit, reality and triumph of real young people living life outside the template, i.e. the traditional life. We write about working where you want, living how you want, and being who you want to be.

You can read the manifesto here. And you can subscribe to the RSS here. But I would visit the site – the comments section is alive and kicking.

I’ll be reposting excerpts of my Untemplater posts here, so don’t worry – you can’t miss me.

As I lay on the couch, piecing together my idea for a post on themes versus resolutions, I went through the various themes I’d had in previous years, out loud to my boyfriend.

“’07 was well, just surviving. ’08 was the Year of Relationships. And this year was the Year of Finances.”

“So what’s 2010?” he asked.

I took a deep breath.

The Year of Organization.

My theme is usually based on the big hairy elephant in the room. Last year, I was over-drafting my bank account at least once a month. I never had enough money to last till the next paycheck. I had zero savings and three maxed out credit cards. I was perpetually without and didn’t have anything to show for it.

Enter 2009: The Year of Finances. It took me a while to figure out what would work for me. I had a lot of bad money habits and I really didn’t want to change many of them. After a few months of trying different things out, I finally got on board with Dave Ramsey. As I related in my previous post, I was able to not only stop over-drafting my bank account, but I paid of the credit cards, got current on my student loans, paid all my medical bills, and socked away almost three months of living expenses. In total, I paid down nearly $5,000 in debt.

So, when I say 2010 will be the Year of Organization, I know it will be a challenge.

The Year of Finances sucked. It wasn’t all la-la-la, I have so much money to throw into things. I had to budget, I had to forgo vacations, I didn’t get to buy any tech gadgets… and I had to start drinking coffee at home. I’m kidding, but it really was a painful change to make. I had a lot of great support from other Ramsey-ites (thanks to Michelle, Ashley and Kendra!), which helped.

Why this theme

As I said in the previous post, you should pick a theme that solves the most of your problems. And most of my problems these days seem to come from a complete and utter lack of organization. And there is mounting evidence that if I don’t make 2010 the Year of Organization, it might kill me.

I have two jobs.
I love my “day” job working in marketing research and don’t see that changing anytime soon. I work for a company that genuinely cares about me; I have a great boss and believe that management wants me here. I also have my own company that I work with after-hours and on weekends, which scratches my entrepreneurial itch but also fills my every waking moment outside of work. Having two careers is tough, and there’s a lot of schedule juggling to make it all happen without losing any integrity or quality in one or the other.

I have time-consuming allergies.
I have six – count them – SIX allergies. Four are environmental (dust mites, cat hair, mold and trees), but the other two are the tough ones: food allergies. I’m allergic to both wheat and soy, which means I pretty much can’t eat anything manufactured, processed or pre-packaged. I take medication for my environmental allergies, which works sometimes. I have to wash our comforter, comforter cover, sheets, special allergy pillow covers and mattress cover in hot bleach water every other week, which usually eats up an entire Saturday. I have to pre-cook my meals for the week, or I end up eating stuff I shouldn’t or not eating anything at all. And if I don’t make everything click exactly right, my allergic reactions usually take the form of intense fatigue.

I can’t say no.
They always tell people to make realistic goals. Saying “no” just isn’t a realistic goal for me. Start a local chapter of Social Media Club? Yes. Start a company? Yes. Put on a conference? Yes. Write some ebooks? Yes. Sit on this special committee? Yes. Take on a new client? Be on a radio show? Plan an unconference? Write for this new blog network? Yes, yes, yes and yes please! I like doing a lot of things. But that takes organization.

I’ve always been “messy” and I’m tired of it.
I don’t want to shatter anyone’s perception of me, but um… I’m really messy. Right now, I have four coffee cups on my desk, a spoon, two open bottles of water, and various tiny pieces of paper with notes on them. I never really finish the process of getting the laundry into the appropriate drawers, if by some miracle I fold them, and I don’t use my home office because I can’t move in it. When I was a kid, my mom coined the term “fire path” to describe the clear lane from my bed to the door in an otherwise unruly bedroom. I’ve always blamed this messiness and disorganization on my creativity… a big brain like mine simply can’t be bothered with details. But this isn’t really who I want to be. And I’ll be the first to admit that a neatly-appointed space just feels nicer.

I know there’s a long road ahead as I fumble through what doesn’t work before I find what does, but a New Year’s Theme shouldn’t be easy. And if I have anything like the kind of success I had in the Year of Finances, then the Year of Organization is going to be a very good one.

If you haven’t shared already, what’s your theme for 2010? Why?

Photo courtesy of austinevan via Flickr.

Every year after Christmas, people sit down and review the past year. They look ahead and come up with an improbable list of to-do items for the coming year. You’re going to run four times a week, not eat fast food, do a monthly budget you live and die by, put 20 percent of your paycheck into savings, spend more time with family, learn to knit, take a Spanish class, get to work on time, get 8 hours of sleep… essentially, you’re going to become perfect.

And then you don’t do one of them. And they all go down the drain because if you’re not going to be perfect, well then why do a bunch of stuff that’s no fun?

At least, that’s been my experience. Every year, I got swept up in the spirit of self-improvement and made ridiculously long lists of things I was going to do differently, learn or stop doing. I made calendars and schedules and stuck to them for about… oh, maybe three weeks.

Which makes me average it turns out. According to time management firm FranklinCovey, only a third of people will even make it to the end of January.

The end of JANUARY.

The cure is supposedly to make a specific resolution. Perhaps pick just one of the resolutions I listed in the first paragraph and go with that.

But that hasn’t worked for me. I have that Gen Y disease of ambition. Just one of those resolutions feels so… flimsy.

Why you need a theme

Here’s my problem with these specific resolutions: they may not be the right answer. Maybe you find that putting 20 percent of your paycheck into savings isn’t going to work because you can’t stop over-drafting your bank account. Or, you find out your knees can’t handle running. Or, you find it impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. And then you just give up.

What you need is a theme, something that sets the tone for your year, and gives you a banner to work under. In the end, what is your overall goal? Is it to be fit and healthy, to have good finances, to feel rested? Make it the Year of Finances, or the Year of Fitness, or the Year of Relaxation.

For the past three years, I’ve picked a theme for my year. And it’s worked.

2007 was the Year of Survival. I got sober in April (a late start to the year, I know), and basically just learned how to live all over again. This theme was more or less picked for me. I can’t take credit for that one.

2008 was the Year of Relationships, as you can clearly see in my blog (here, here, here and here). Having learned to survive, I went about learning how to survive with others. My relationships with men were all over the board as I tried to figure out what I wanted and who I was. My relationships with family and friends got some work also. I think this was a subconscious theme.

2009 was the Year of Finances. Honestly, this was the first year I set a resolute theme at the beginning of the year with an earnest desire to tackle it. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I fumbled around with Quicken Online and heard about Mint.com and read I Will Teach You To Be Rich, but what ended up working for me was Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. I didn’t get on board with it until May. But I didn’t give up on my finances because that theme hung over my head all year. I knew that there was an answer and having a theme, and not a specific resolution, helped me gather the research, feedback and experimentation I needed to find my answer.

How to pick a theme

The more my life becomes calm and healthy, the more the areas that need work seem to stick out. I’m not blessed with the kind of clarity in my life where I can just go, “Oh, I really need to work on my finances! I can see how this contributes to my other problems.” Yeah, I don’t have that.

So I sort of feel my way through my life, asking myself what feels bad, where do I feel negative emotion in my day, then trying to trace it back to the source. I felt awful when my bank account over-drafted for the billionth time. And oh, hey! That seems to come up a lot. Maybe I should work on that.

Ask yourself these questions:
- What is causing the most problems in my life?
- What is giving me the most chaos?
- What are the most inconvenient things happening?
- What seems to be happening over and over again even though I try not to?
- Where do I see a spike in negative emotion in my daily life?
- What would give me the most peace if I could find a solution for it?

If you’re having trouble picking between two (or three or four…), pick the one that’s solves the most problems. Last year I was trying to choose between the Year of Finances and the Year of Health & Fitness. When I made a list of the problems each would solve, the Finances Year solved a lot more problems, including some of my health problems (medical care is expensive, yo!).

What happens next…

The amazing thing about having a theme for your year is that it’s about changing your mindset toward a certain area of your life. You’ve decided to change some area of your life that you previously carried an attitude of indifference toward. Lots of things will change.

Take my 2009 Year of Finances for example: not only did I stop over-drafting my bank account (which could’ve been my short-sighted New Year’s Resolution), but I’ve paid off all my credit cards, survived meeting my hefty insurance deductible for health care (thanks to surgery), and stored away almost three months of living expenses in my savings account. And since I decided I needed an alternate stream of income, I started my first business and have a steady stream of clients. Year of Finances indeed!

Of course your theme can fail. The number one reason resolutions fail is because people aren’t committed to them in the first place. If you aren’t committed to your theme, then you won’t move on it.

Move forward with a positive attitude. Remember this is the year you will change your [finances/health/career/love life/insert theme here]!

The great thing is that area of your life will be forever changed, not just temporarily shifted. As I move into my 2010 theme, I don’t stop working on my finances. My attitude toward finances has been changed forever.

Wanna know my theme for 2010? Read the follow-up post here. What’s your theme for 2010?

Photo courtesy of Tojosan via Flickr.

Photo credit: Prosto Photos via Flickr.

For the first time in my life, at 26, I found myself single and with no home to go home to at Christmas. My parents had divorced and moved across the country to different states. My ex-boyfriend and I had split back in April and I was still getting my bearings after 8 months of sobriety. And to add just a little extra something of fun, my birthday is 10 days before Christmas.

Joy.

Christmas is always a rough time of the year for me. In 1998 my family suffered the sudden loss of two beloved family members at Christmas time, one the day after my birthday and the other on Christmas morning. It’s fair to say that we never really “celebrated” Christmas after that. The ornaments, stockings and trimmings never came out of the box in the attic again.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have the noise of someone else’s happily unaffected family gatherings to drown out the sadness. Nor did I have the comfort of alcohol to turn to. Not even a warm body to wake up next to on Christmas morning.

Holy crap. I was going to be alone on Christmas morning. For the first time in my life.

I leaned heavily on my mentor, whose advice surprised me. I, like so many other blog titles I’ve been reading this season, merely aspired to survive the holidays. To not feel so lonely. But she turned everything on its head, like she so often does.

“Savor it,” she said. “You may never be here again.”

Coming from someone with a husband of 10 years and two kids, I took her words to heart.

I may never be single again. I may never get to spend a Christmas alone again. I may never have the total command of my holidays to do whatever I wish with them again.

Needless to say, I was a little pissed to be there again the following year, but by then I had figured out how to enjoy my Christmas solo. As a matter of fact, I grew to love spending the holidays alone.

Do your favorite things.
I was surprised to find my local Starbucks open on Christmas Day, so I took full advantage. I rarely get to sit, carefree and unscheduled, in a café with my journal, headphones and latte, without anything else on my mind. Christmas gives us the freedom to do this, if only for one day, obligation-free.

Give yourself the gift of permission to do your favorite activities, free of schedules, obligations, and guilt.

Organize a meet-up.
Guess what? You’re not the only person in your city spending the holidays alone. My first Christmas solo I organized the first annual Sad Bastards Christmas dinner. OK, so it was only me and one other person at a greasy spoon, but it was fun and I made a new friend. I liked it so much that I also organized a Sad Bastards Valentine’s Day tweet-up the following year (there were a lot more attendees at that one). You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to.

Help someone else.
There are tons of volunteer opportunities on Christmas Day. Even though I’m not alone this year, the boyfriend and I don’t really have anything to do on Christmas Day, no family gatherings or dinners, etc. so we’re going to volunteer feeding the homeless. In these tough economic times, it’s tough not to want to give of your time wherever you can to those who have had worse luck than you.

Cook something yummy.
It just wouldn’t feel like Christmas without something yummy. I’m not saying cook a whole turkey, but something small to make you feel like you’ve celebrated. Food can be a comfort, but it can also be a major downer. There’s just something slightly depressing about gnoshing on a turkey sub for your Christmas dinner.

Do something holiday-ish. Briefly.
I do have extended family in town, and while it’s not the same as spending the whole day with your parents and siblings, it’s still nice to spend an hour or two with them celebrating their Christmas. I keep it in small doses to ensure that I don’t get sad or mopey that I don’t have what they have this year.

Savor.
I’ll never forget my favorite moment of that first Christmas alone. The dreaded Christmas morning had come. I made a pot of coffee and poured a piping hot mug. I sat on my stoop outside, watching the wind blow the leaves off the maple tree, warming my hands on my mug, and savored that moment.

I was alone on Christmas and I might never be there again.

It began a year ago. One test lead to a biopsy, which in turn led to 3 months of waiting. Waiting to see if my body would “take care of it.” I ate healthy, exercised, didn’t drink or smoke, so the doctor blamed stress. I turned my life upside down in the quest for stress-free living.

Another biopsy. A surgery.

Fatigue, bone-wearying fatigue, the kind where you barely make it work every day and want nothing but sleep.

A test. Another biopsy, followed by a two-week lapse into the border on despair.

A visit to an internal specialist, a work-up, a second opinion, allergy testing. A surprise ending from the second opinion – there’s nothing to worry about, the first doctor’s approach was aggressive and had severely overtreated me.

Just like that. Release. A clean bill of health.

The soul-tired feeling fell away within a few days… it took some time to sink in, but once it did my heart felt so light. Finally, finally my shoulders relaxed. I think they had been hunched for months, the constant companion of sad and tired eyes.

The actual tired feeling, it turns out, is the result of chronic untreated allergies. I am allergic to dust mites, mold, cat hair, trees, soy and wheat. I started medication immediately.

It’s only been a day, but already the constant fog has lifted. I have energy. Energy I wondered if I would ever have again – energy to blog, to read, to talk, to do laundry – even after a full day of work.

I have energy.

It’s true that you don’t know how valuable things are until they are gone. The nights I would cry out of frustration and exhaustion were more and more frequent. I had, ironically, spent a year trying to figure out how to not pack my schedule, only to find somewhere in the middle that I couldn’t do what I had been used to doing even if I wanted to.

But now it’s back. I have energy.

And I get to start again. I can start from here.

Photo credit: basegreen via Flickr.

Gumption (noun): Enterprise [readiness to engage in daring or difficult action], initiative

What a great word. I love looking up words. Did you know that the better your vocabulary, the better you are at communicating? It makes sense when you think about how many wonderful words there are out there that describe exactly what you’re trying to say.

Back to gumption.

My love of the word started the first time I saw “Working Girl.” When the main character finally moves up from being a secretary, the CEO tells her, “Gumption, Ms. McGill.” And in “The Holiday,” when the main character has her moment of triumph, she announces, “I think what I’ve got is something slightly resembling… GUMPTION!”

Gumption. Initiative with a side of enterprise.

It’s one of those words you stick in your back pocket for motivation. It’s a one word inspirational quote. It’s the word you whisper to yourself when  you just don’t feel like doing anymore. It’s the backbone when someone is telling ‘no’ when you need a ‘yes.’ It’s the extra boost you need to take a good idea and grind out a business plan while everyone else is watching “So You Think You Can Dance?”

Gumption is what will set you apart, no matter the generation, the industry, or the gender.

Photo credit: MassDistraction via Flickr.

It may not look like I’m blogging, but that’s just because it’s happening in so many other places! (Note to self: write a WorkLoveLife post about the trials & tribulations of having 3 blogs…)

HollyHoffman.com: 3 Social Media Offenders Creep Into Late Adopter Markets

NeoviaSolutions.com: Avoiding Social Media Less of an Option for Businesses

Check out my social media thoughts here. And check out my brand-spanking new company, Neovia Solutions. You’ll see lots of great stuff there for businesses and organizations trying to “get” social media.

This is a guest post from Carlos Miceli, who blogs ever-so-succinctly at OwlSparks.com.

People fascinate me.

I enjoy looking and listening to them.

I like analyzing their exteriors and predicting their actions.

I love imagining their backgrounds and guessing their goals and desires.

One of the aspects that have interested me enormously lately is love and attraction.

What it means to people, what they really look in another person, what they do to “triumph” and what they hide away.

Infinite variables affect the way we act towards relationships, but I’ve seen one attitude present in most people (especially young people), one that I think we should re-evaluate.

That attitude is expectancy. The idea of love as a sure step. The problem is this:

Expecting to be in happy relationship is a recipe for conformity.

I’m obviously not saying that being in a happy relationship is impossible, nor I’m saying that we shouldn’t try to be in one.

We just shouldn’t expect it.

We still put “being happily married” as one of the obvious steps of life, after graduating and having a job. As if we should logically go through it at some point. There’s a clear problem with people saying things like “I want to be married by the time I’m X.” Even though words like destiny, karma and soul mates may sound nice, I don’t think they prove anything. We shouldn’t put our hopes in them.

So, conformism kicks in. We are stubborn people. It’s human nature, you know? To prevent our “plans” from changing, we force ourselves to fit our context into our goals, instead of doing the opposite. We reject the idea of solitude as a possibility (and ending) for many of us, so we invent and create a fantasy that suits our dreams.

The result? A lowered standard relationship with either a short-life span of Hollywood moments, or a permanent situation filled with regrets, unhappiness and broken dreams. This is no the case for every relationship out there, but I’m sure it’s the case with most of them that end badly.

Maybe it’s because of pride; maybe it’s ignorance - the reason is irrelevant. What matters is that we are not very fond of embracing randomness as the main factor and ruler of our lives.

Look, here’s the thing: As opposed to choosing your major or career direction, you’re only in charge of 50% of the decision when it comes to relationships.

That’s OK. Accept that.

Otherwise you’ll get stuck with the other half looking to settle, and not the half looking for you.