Resolving to Let Go

Happy New Year, y’all! Let’s hope it’s better than the shit-show of a year that was 2017, yeah?

 

As I thought about resolutions this year, a brilliant friend of mine said something that really stuck with me. Instead of resolving to do, she lets go. And that is a practice I very much want to adopt. Because, my friends,I have been dropping the ball lately. Dropping the ball on beta reads, dropping the ball on blogging, dropping the ball on Instagram, and y’all, I cannot even SEE the Twitter ball anymore. One of the dogs probably buried it in the yard. So this year, while I do have some pretty intense personal and professional goals which I’ll briefly skim over later, I mostly want to talk about the things and the habits I’m letting go of this year.

  1. I will let go of my fear of pain. For the last two years, I’ve been dealing with extreme joint pain that has made my life rather challenging and stumped my doctors. And in that time, I’ve slowly let go of the things that make me hurt, but also make me stronger. I stopped taking long walks with my dogs because those walks sometimes left me in bed the next day. But sometimes they didn’t. I stopped lifting weights because sometimes I couldn’t lift a pen the next day. But sometimes I could. There’s no correlation (at this point) between my activity level and my pain. In 2018 I’m not going to hesitate to take full advantage of my good days. I’m going to let go of being afraid of hurting.
  2. I want to let go of my feelings about how others perceive me. I can control what I do, but I can’t control how other people feel about it. So I will be as kind, as generous, and as honest as I can manage, and if that’s not enough for someone, I’m going to try to say, “fine by me.”
  3. I will let go of The Diminished. As soon as that big ol’ thing is in print, it’s not mine anymore. It’s yours. And while OF COURSE I’ll still be doing promotion, and I still care about its success, I can’t control its reception. So I’m letting it go.
  4. I’m letting go of judging myself. I am pretty great, y’all, and I need to stop letting that jerk inside my brain tell me otherwise.

SO THAT SHOULD BE EASY, RIGHT?? RIGHT???

 

 

Author: Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

Kaitlyn Sage Patterson grew up with her nose in a book outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After completing her M.F.A., she moved to South Korea, where she taught English and started writing her debut novel. THE DIMINISHED will be published by HarlequinTEEN in April 2018, followed by its sequel in 2019. When she's not staring off into space and trying to untangle some particularly troublesome plot point, she can be found in her kitchen, perfecting the most difficult recipe she can find; or at the barn, where she rides and trains dressage horses; or with her husband, spoiling their sweet rescue dogs.

4 Replies to “Resolving to Let Go”

  1. Kaitlyn, what a great post. Before I had had the “pleasure” of long-term pain, I never paid much attention when people said they suffered from pain. “Oh, too bad.” So I guess if anything, pain is a teacher. I’m so sorry you’re having to go through that. I’m assuming you’ve tried the “no sugar” route, which does a lot to alleviate my joint pain. But I’m a lot older than you, and my joint pain is of the “lived a long time” sort. Sounds like yours is more elusive. I wish you well with that.

    I had to smile at the thing about letting go of what others think of you. Recently someone told me I was “blunt,” which hurt my feelings. So I told another friend. She said, of course I was blunt, although she thought of it more as “direct,”–and that’s what she loved about me. No dithering around. So the eye of the beholder, and all that.

    Bottom line, I love the idea of “letting go” as part of the resolution process.

    1. Thank you so much for your kind response! I’m TOTALLY on the no sugar train and it does help some. Thank you for suggesting it. (I’m actually doing yet another Whole 30 right now, which I often find gets me the most good days out of anything I can do.

      I love blunt people! I think we should all be more direct with one another.

      I have Zoraida Cordova to thank for the idea of “letting go.” I think it’s absolutely brilliant.

  2. Love the idea of letting more go in the new year rather than adding on more. Hope you don’t hate medical advice. I recommend acupuncture to you. It’s often great even when the official diagnosis is elusive. Good luck to you, and with your book!

    1. Thanks! Acupuncture has been a TREMENDOUS help. That and eating a really clean diet have my pain more under control than I ever expected. Thank you for the suggestion!

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