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.

I suppose I had it coming. Things were just too good, and I couldn’t let well enough alone. I’d just gotten a tremendous promotion, and after a week’s vacation in New York, Date #4 and I had reconnected on a new level. I’d finally settled into our relationship after waffling on whether or not I ought to be in one. I let myself fall in love again, and we celebrated our six-month anniversary with a fancy dinner out.

And, despite the fact that he had decided with much finality that he would be moving away come the new year and that neither of us wanted to carry on a long-distance relationship, we were getting along splendidly.

I couldn’t let well enough alone.

I’d been reading about open relationships. It all made sense to me. Were we really made to be monogamous? I’m evolved enough to know that what we feel and have between us is stronger than sex. I’m progressive enough to know that sex is just sex, and what we have is intimacy and love. How many relationships had I ended just because the proverbial grass looked greener on the other side? Nearly all of them.

So, Date #4 and I had a long talk about fidelity, openness, sexuality, trust… and we came to the conclusion that since we’d been ending our relationship in two months anyways, why not try a little experiment? We made a list of people we didn’t want the other to sleep with and insisted on total honesty. This was Tuesday evening.

Date #4 headed out of town for the weekend, and work kept me in town. So, I decided to begin our Great Experiment by heading out to the club to carry on as an Ethical Slut. The funniest thing happened though. As I looked around at the men hitting on me, none of them came close to Date #4. I realized how little I really wanted to sleep with anyone. Sure, it sounded nice in the theoretical sense, but when faced with it, I balked. More than anything, I missed him.

I left the too-interested guy sitting next to me at the club early on in the night, and texted Date #4. No answer. I fell asleep and woke early to a horrific nightmare – I’d dreamt that he’d slept with someone the night before. I needed to terminate the experiment before something irreparable happened. I called. Straight to voicemail.

I was petrified.

Finally, he called. “Oh, finally,” I said with tears in my throat. “I can’t do this. I had this terrible dream last night that you slept with someone else.”

Silence.

“I did.”

Silence.

“Are you serious? You’re not serious.”

Silence.

I wanted to vomit. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Why did I think I could do this? What ever made me think that I could share the man I love so deeply with anyone and not care?

I’m devastated and I’m heartbroken, and it’s my own fault. It was my idea. I can’t be angry or pissed off at him. I have no idea how I’ll forgive myself, and I have no idea what will happen with our relationship.

I met up with a friend early and he looked at me and said, “You know, Holly, no offense, but you don’t have the personality for an open relationship.” Hindsight is 20/20.

So, let me offer you my lessons since I came by them so hard.

1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Date #4 and I had two more good months left to enjoy one another and the opportunity to part amicably. I have a tendency to pick and pick and pick at something, until voila! Disaster.

2. Give yourself sometime to consider the weight of your decision. Based on one conversation, we made a very big decision and barreled ahead. We didn’t even give ourselves a full week to sleep on it.

3. Be willing to accept the consequences. I knew this outcome was possible, that our decision might ruin everything, but I really thought I was much more progressive than that. Imagine the worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario. Ask yourself if the worst is worth the best. In hindsight, my answer would be no.

4. Consider both sides of the story. I didn’t read one negative article about open relationships. I only read the positive ones. That’s poor decision-making.

I don’t know if Date #4 and I will survive this or not. The “emergency brake” we both agreed upon in our original conversation has definitely been pulled, but I’m not sure what to do now. It seems unfair to end everything because he did what we said we would do, but I’m also very, very confused. Why did he do it so fast? Why didn’t the feelings that kept me from hooking up with someone keep him from it? Would I have cared so much if I had hooked up with someone too?

I don’t have the answers. I’m just learning as I go along, and there’s some collateral damage sometimes. In this case, it’s my own heart. I can tell you that it’s the last time I will handle it so lightly.