8 Secret New Year's Resolutions

After Christmas, instead of asking everyone, "How was your Holiday?", I would like to ask, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

This year, I was looking for a little companionship and fun. And to be honest, I didn't really get either.

I have realized that I need more fun and friends in my life. That is why my New Year's Resolution reflects that. I plan on socializing more in 2010. Or how about just socializing at all?

I think this is somewhat the way others determine their New Year's resolution. Every year many get their hopes up. It's called Holiday Spirit. People try to get "into" the meaning of the holiday. Others look to family and to a lesser extent, friends, to fulfill their Holiday Spirit needs.

I believe our secret New Year's Resolutions reflect, what deep down inside, we realized we were missing after the Holiday.

So we move on to improve things. We figure the new year is the answer for what we missed at the holidays.

The following are 8 well-known New Year's Resolutions and their secret counterparts:

1. The most popular not-so-secret New Year's Resolution's is to lose weight. With similar secret resolutions being: to look younger, wear more fashionable clothes, apply make-up more professionally, and of course, have more good hair days.


2. Probably the next most favored resolution is regarding money. Something along the lines of spend less, and/or make more. The connected secret aim is to get a new car, bigger house and more toys.


3. There's the infamous career advancement, which really means I want the boss to like me.


4. Of course, another attractive intention is to have closer relationships, companionship and understanding. These people secretly want love or just better sex.






5. I've also heard a lot about spirituality. People really want inner peace, change, a fresh start/clean slate, less stress, hope, relief, freedom, or just an easier life.


6. Another leading declaration is to be more organized, which translates to having a clean house or just more time in the day.


7. The people who wish to be smarter, declare themselves to want to go back to school.





8. The resolution to quit smoking is sometimes about health, but most often about control.


In my mind there is nothing wrong with trying to improve your life through a resolution, as long as one is committed and can sustain the momentum all year. My 2009 New Year's Resolution was vague, but I think I (barely) managed to sustain it. It was to put more effort into yournontoxiclife. How'd I do?

There may be more to come on the 2010 New Year's Resolution. I may use yournontoxiclife as an online diary of how well I do with making more friends and having more fun. Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!!!


(photo credits: Abigail Silvester, alancleaver_2000, Qfamily, DorkJr)

11 Red Flags that you're Friends with a Psycho

Are there rules to friendships?

Some would say no. They would say true friendships come naturally and if everyone plays well with others, rules aren't necessary.

But, others...Others would say yes, friends need to treat each other a certain way. Their certain way. Now the specifics are a little tricky. It seems of those who have friendship rules, each has their own, unique set of symptoms, uh, I mean rules.

If you are concerned one of your friends may be pushing things a little too much with you or you find yourself on the receiving end of one tantrum after another, look below.

You may be friends with a psycho if:


1. You must return their calls the same day.
Their thinking: If they are a true friend, they will always prioritize my call.

2. You must return texts within an hour.
I have seen this one with possessive boyfriends, too.

3. You must reciprocate communication exactly.
This is classic "score keeping" and they are the only ones keeping tally marks.



4. You must remember all birthdays, holidays, etc. This one keeps card shops in business and can be a nightmare for those of use with bad memories.

5. You must assume all Friday nights are Friend nights.
It's the assumption that is the red flag here. Why not ask?

6. You must take turns buying lunch.
This may sound like common courtesy, but I'm talking about when pennies are counted and someone brings up you ordered one more drink than they did.

7. Your closet is their closet.
I know this sound so junior high, but this thinking can be expanded to include tools and kitchen appliances.

8. Your friend feels invited to all of your parties, automatically This can be really tricky if you want a party just for family. Some "rule following" friends consider themselves to be just like family and will feel VERY rejected if they are not welcomed at all events.

9. Your friend tells you everything. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Just a warning that this includes confessions of the illegal and immoral kind.

10. You must drop everything and stay over if they get dumped.
OK, what once was automatic, has now changed as you are not single and have witnessed your friend get dumped by half of Boston. But they may still consider it your duty.

11. They are your only best friend.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. It means no one else can have a personal joke without them.

Now some of these may seem perfectly normal to you non-rule followers. However, notice that most of them fall into two categories: possessiveness, and score keeping. I don't know about most of you, but to me, that's a little too first grade to be normal adult behavior.

And the thing is, many people who have rules of friendship, follow like close to ALL of these rules. I think that is where the rest of us get into trouble.

One, we don't really think about all this with our friends. And two, going into a potential friendship with rules that are basically invisible to one person, is a set up for a let down. And a fight.

You might be wondering what would happen if someone with rules became friends with someone else with rules?

Think mutual restraining orders.

(photo credits: e v e n, and ClevelandSGS,)

September 11, 2009 Patriot Day

I hate this day. I hate what happened 8 years ago. I hate how we seem to be ignoring the biggest disaster I have ever witnessed in my life.

I hate that 9/11 has caused me to hate.

For years now, I have asked for a National Holiday to honor the victims and their families. I feel this should be a day when we look at our loved ones and realize how fortunate we are and thank whichever God we pray to that we have our family right now.

And now we have Patriot Day. This year I thought that would make a difference. But it just seemed like business as usual.

Today is nothing like business as usual. To me, there is still no closure and probably never will be. People went to work that day just like we did today. The difference is they never came home.

September 11, 2010 will be a Saturday and I am going to pretend it's the National Holiday I always wanted. I intend to celebrate life, family and freedom. I will not say, "I hate..." that day. I will instead name the things I have; the things I love.

geocaching, cheap fun or waste of gas?

respres

I recently had my first taste of a geocaching adventure. We looked up coordinates on the Internet, piled into the car and got down to "treasure hunting".

After 30 minutes and three turnarounds, we found the area in which the coordinates and the treasure were hiding. We walked around for a few minutes and one of the kids found it!

luis perez

The "treasure" was a tin full of coins and small trinkets. There was also a ledger. We selected a small bead and added our name and the date to the ledger. We also left behind a quarter as our contribution.

Then, it was off to find a restroom. After that we headed home for lunch. We headed back out in the afternoon, in the opposite direction, with a different set of coordinates, which were more difficult to find.

Finally, after about 45 minutes in the car and 5 turnarounds, we pulled over and found the treasure right away: a plastic bin with photos of people in it, among other things. Since we had read ahead of time to bring a pic to this one, we added one of our neighbor's dog, then took a picture of ourselves, holding the bin.

viZZZual.com

By then the bugs were beginning to come out and rain was threatening, so we headed back.

All in all it wasn't a bad time, but I couldn't help but think of the gas we used on our little adventure. On the other hand, the kids LOVED it and kept talking about the treasure hunt the rest of the day.

However, I am not one to just do things because the kids love it. There needs to be something else in it that's beneficial, like physical exercise, good nutrition, cooperative skill building or education.

As well, we spent a few hours in the car, unable to make too much eye contact, is that really family bonding?

I don't know--I'm leaning toward this not being something we do in a car. Maybe if I hid a treasure at the local park, then let the kids find it, it would be better, and serve another purpose?

Where do you stand on geocaching? Family treasure hunting fun or another example of indifference to the oil crisis?

.schill

PLEASE give me your $.02 on this one! I need to figure out if we'll do this again.

The bully who defined me | PhD in Parenting

The bully who defined me | PhD in Parenting

This is such a heart wrenching story from Annie, PhD in Parenting, about her experiences with bullying for many years. I am curious about your experiences with bullying, too and I have the same questions for you that I asked of Annie.
What could've made the difference? Teachers doing something? Parents? Please comment below.

stumbling my followers

p@r@noid

I just successfully stumbled all my blog followers!

you comment, I link

existentist

I am trying something a little different here at yournontoxiclife. I am going to offer a link (see sidebar) for each commenter to my posts. I have already started and those of you have already commented will notice a nice trackback already. Happy commenting!

24 four hour "grace period" for emails

surfstyle

You know what I'm talking about here. You are at your job and reading emails. Things go along at a tedious and boring rate until: BAM! You get the most irritating and irrational email yet. Worse, it's actually sent to many with a request to reply back, "ASAP". You hit reply-all and go to town.

Though I try very hard not to let my inner toxicity show, here is a quote from a reply I drafted recently:

"OK. This has to be the most ridiculous idea for department meetings yet. We are already overworked and underpaid. And Jane (not her real name), I can't believe you think weekly meetings will help efficiency!!! Are you stupid or just on crack??!! Has it ever occurred to you that if we had less of these STUPID emails to answer, we would get more work done??!!! Anyone who actually goes to this meeting is an idiot and a loser!

Best,

Maggie"

respres

Of course, I said, "draft" because there is no way this should have been sent out. I gave it the 24 hour furious grace period and edited it a bit:

"OK. I agree we need to have department meetings regularly, but I have to respectfully disagree that weekly meetings are the way to go. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Jane, but I think last year we agreed that scheduling large of chunks of time for paperwork increased efficiency. Given that, wouldn't it make more sense to schedule these meetings biweekly so we could still have larger amounts of time for paperwork on those off-weeks? Just a thought. Can we dialogue about this (via email) before the next meeting, though, so I know if anyone else is on the same page? Maybe I'm just off with all this.

Best,

Maggie"

I got more people coming out of the woodwork agreeing with me and thanking me for reminding them about our earlier discussion on efficiency. We ended up with having the biweekly meetings, thankyouverymuch!

Had I sent the former, I would now be looking for a new job and probably not finding one.

Darren Foreman

I actually keep some drafts in my personal email folder for up to a year before sending them. Those involve family emails that are just short of telling some relatives to eff off, due to the disrespectful/non-supportive/dishonest email I received from them. I feel that is important enough to wait a VERY long while to edit and then send.

On the other hand, I usually gather all my bitchiness about me when I faced with a customer service issue via email. I have really let some companies get my worst thoughts with a 'cc' to whatever corporate office they have. However, to be completely honest, I'd rather have it out with them on the phone than via email. It's much more fun and natural to be an irate customer using tone of voice and volume.

Does anyone else subscribe to a "grace period" for nasty emails?

happy father's day!

BarelyFitz

8 ways to avoid or end a toxic relationship

Uploaded on March 13, 2008
by John-Morgan

I just posted about my own personal experience with a toxic relationship. Here is a more objective description along with 8 tips to help you avoid or end a toxic relationship.

Even though I think most people know a toxic relationship when they see it, I still think a definition is in order.

A toxic relationship is a relationship between two or more people. It involves some toxic activity ranging from:

• dangerous stuff like abuse, drug use and other illicit activities
• less dangerous, but just as toxic things like lying, stealing, and cheating
• most common toxic relationships I know of consist of more subtle things like one person "using" another or bullying the other person through guilt or threats
  

These are the relationships where one person feels the other is "draining the life out of them."

This is not healthy! Your friends should make you feel good and supported. Friends should be fun!

Uploaded on June 18, 2006
by Gwennypics

Ok, now that we've identified a toxic relationship, here are 8 ways to avoid or end the relationship:

1) Be weary- when you first meet someone, look for ANY signs that things may get toxic. See my list of warning signs

2) Be picky- no one NEEDS to have 224 friends on face book. In my opinion, a person only needs three to five good friends to be healthy

3) Be available, but- not at anyone's beck and call. You should always maintain your own, separate life outside of the friendship

4) Be aware of their other friends- if your their only friend, there could be a toxic reason for that

Uploaded on January 31, 2009
by simplified complication

5) Breaking up directly- tell them honestly, but tactfully. "I think we need a break from each other." "I feel like I don't have the time for this friendship right now." "I need to spend more time with other people right now." Notice these are all "I" statements that put the burden on you, not them. This doesn't have to be any more confrontational than it needs to be.

6) Breaking up, "fade style"- this can be done by slowly decreasing contact and future plans, while becoming quite busy in another part of you life. If done correctly, the other person may be mad, but not overly enraged.

7) Breaking up, the blow off- this may not be the nicest, but it does work well in some situations. You can start by blowing off some instant/text messages, emails, etc. Then move on to making plans that you won't keep. Forget to call them or send them a card. This sends a strong message that you aren't good friend material and should allow them to feel THEY ended the friendship.

8) Breaking up, legal means- OK, this is a last resort, for sure, but if things have gotten stalkerish or violent, you really do need to get a restraining order or order of protection. Contact your local police for more information. Sadly this was the direction I had to go in my own toxic relationship.

How do you end or avoid a toxic relationship?

I was in a toxic relationship

Several years ago, I was friends with a woman who lived in my building. She was young and seemed so innocent, that being her first place of her own. I was drawn to her youthfulness.

We chatted and drank some beers. We seemed to get really close, really fast. We gave each other "lock out" keys. I even had her let my mom in once when I was running late.

We went through some hard times: breaking up with boyfriends, and having both our apartments burglarized. I even covered for her when she was hungover and her boss called.

After about 10 months, my mom of all people made me wonder about my friend. She called me to say her friend from the pharmacy knew my friend and knew her to be a "druggie".

This led me to rethink the burglary and the numerous hangovers. I began observing things in a whole new way. Unfortunately, my mom's friend turned out to be right. My friend was an addict.

It had been she who stole my things, faking a similar break in at her place to throw off suspicion. She was also indirectly responsible for my boyfriend breaking up with me. In reality, I was in a toxic relationship.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and I can now tell you the warning signs I did not see:

1) She was always trying to get me to be like her. She was very into predrinking and thought I should be, too.

2) She got really over personal with me. Even that first night I met her, she told me such personal things about her childhood that I almost felt obligated to her, if that makes sense.

3) She got jealous. She didn't like all the time I spent with my other friends and my boyfriend. She would call me really drunk and crying many of the nights I was out without her.

4) I just didn't feel GOOD with her. It was always dramatic and usually in a very dragging way.

5) I actually realize now I never liked her. I always felt obligated and guilty.

6) She actually stole from me. And lied. A lot, apparently.

7) I don't know why she picked me or really wanted to have any kind of relationship with me, but it wasn't based on respect, for sure. I think I was just there, in the apartment building, at the right time.

Does any of this ring a bell? Most people I have talked to admit to having been involved in some kind of toxic relationship in their life.

I know I should have known better, but honestly the drama was so loud, I couldn't hear my own gut screaming.

what I want for Mother's Day

I knew when we began trying to get pregnant that I was giving up some control.  I couldn't control when or even if I would get pregnant.  

Once I was pregnant, I gave up more control over pregnancy symptoms and how healthy the baby in my belly was.  I also gave up control over my ever changing body.

Then there was labor and delivery--talk about loss of control!  I had none.  Absolutely none.  I couldn't control the pain, how long labor would last, and most importantly if the baby would be born healthy.

Fortunately, I got lucky on all those counts, but it was still not in my control.

Now I have children  and I can't control what they say, what they do or how they will grow up.   The control has slipped and slipped until I find myself living each day clueless about what to expect.

So, for Mother's Day, here is what I want: to be in charge of everything else.

I want the Transportation people to check with me, "Can we tear up this road?"  The answer is no, not today.

I want the Weather to check with me, "Can I rain now?"  The answer is yes, for a little while and NOT HARD.

I want my Sleep to ask, "What kind of night do you want?"  The answer is extremely restful.

I want my Grocer to ask for my input before stocking produce: "What kind of fruit would you like today?"  The answer is honeydew melon, mango and REAL tomatoes.

I would like the Mosquitoes to ask,"Can we come out now?"   The answer is hell, no.

Finally, I would just like Noise to ask, "What kind do you want?"  The answer is laughter and a little reggae on the side.

That's all I want for Mother's Day: good customer service from the universe.

Am I asking too much?

hurricane katrina victims still need help

Remember Hurricane Katrina?  I have to confess I have sort of forgotten about it over the years since it was front page news.  

However, did you know that there are many people still without permanent homes?

I learned about this recently when members of my church took a trip to Camp Coast Care.  This is sort of like Habitat for Humanity, but just focused on helping Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild.

It was incredible to see the pics from their trip.  There were so many concrete pads where houses used to be.  It looked empty, like a ghost town, except without buildings.

Of course, there are areas, and businesses that have rebuilt.  My friends frequented the local restaurants as much as possible, but stayed at the camp overnight.  They slept in bunk beds in large communal rooms.

Everyone did something they could do.  Even a 75 year old woman was put to work painting doors and trim.  

Each person who went talked about something that had changed for them as a result of the experience.  One woman said she really learned "to get over herself".

Anyone else need to get over themselves?  Camp Coast Care is taking reservations!

Love Thy Neighbor

There is a lot of work involved in loving others as ourselves. It can be one-sided and feel not worth it. But it can also be worthwhile and gratifying.



I try to apply *love thy neighbor* to people I work with. These are people with whom I have been chosen to cooperate. Some of them have been chosen to work with me. However we have come together we did not choose to work with each other. And, if truth be told, I would not choose to interact with many of my coworkers, if I didn't have to.



But I digress. At work I try to be respectful, even helpful to my fellow workers. I choose to look at the success of the organization as a whole and feel I can work toward that by doing my job and collaborating appropriately with others. This usually works out.

But there are coworkers who do not agree with my vision. In fact, there are people so caught up in their own problems they can barely cooperate or collaborate with others at work. How to handle them?

I used to work with a man who found out he had treatable cancer. He was so upset by this news, so utterly fearful, though for some odd reason he did confide in me, he not only chose not to tell his family, but also to only have minimal treatment. Our boss found out about this (how I am still not sure) and threatened to tell the man's family if he did not tell them himself. I guess that was one way to handle it.

Currently, I have several very angry, and therefore toxic coworkers. Though I don't know the cause of their anger, I have been the brunt of it. It's a very delicate manner and though many have complained about them behind closed doors, only a few people have actually confronted them.

After hearing about a person who killed herself on the job, I find myself wondering. If I try to help my coworkers, I may step out of line and alienate them. On the other hand, I can't control other people's choices. I guess I can't make everyone nontoxic.