A Desert Diary: 2015: Week One (Starting Over)

Write a post a week.

I have proclaimed that as a goal for many years now and I have continually failed to achieve it. My excuses were always understandable: I prioritized my private journal writings over that of blogging, I got too busy with extracurricular activities (theatre, student council, coaching), I had too much grading to do, I was lesson planning, I was on vacation....I live a very busy and active life and it was "understandable" that I couldn't manage to find the time to write a blog post a week. After all, the best excuse I told myself was that it was better to "go out and live life" than to sit around writing about it.

Well this year I want things to be different. This year I want to take more control over my life and challenge myself to be stronger, smarter, faster, and just better than the woman I was last year.

We grow and change as people every year. Experiences change us. People change us. Ideas change us.

This year I learned a great deal about myself: my personal strengths and weaknesses were brought to surface. It was a year of incredible highs and incredible lows.

A brief recap of 2014:

January: celebrated New Years single and happy with my girl friends in NYC. The future felt limitless.
February: travelled to Cambodia and found a renewed faith in humanity and passion to help others. Got accepted to Columbia University Teacher's College!
March: turned 26 years old and spent the month surrounded by friends and feeling very well-loved and cared for.
April: coached softball for the first time and grew closer to a friend here in Saudi
May: helped my first group of IB seniors prepare for their IB exams and the future, juggled several relationships and felt compelled to make some tough choices between men I care about.
June: moved out of my beloved Al Yamama villa and old AIS-R campus. It felt like the end of an era and I was sad to leave.
July: began graduate school and loved every single second of it. Committed to being in an official relationship with a kind and caring man who adored me.
August: actually got to see and spend time with the new boyfriend, it was blissful and perfect and every day felt like living in a dream.
September: return to Saudi and step "back" into my old life, socializing and partying and acting like a single girl
October: a close friend of mine leaves Saudi for good and I leave to go to Colombia to visit with my father, we have one of the best and most adventerous and fun vacations ever
November: a quiet month, I spend a weekend in Dubai to catch the last days of summer, I feel the struggles of being in a long-distance relationship grow stronger but I make the mental commitment to be with the man of my dreams and fantasize about our future seriously
December: the exciting build up to a short lived engagement, followed by the biggest heartbreak I've ever experienced. I hurt someone I loved and must live with the guilt and try to heal and move on. My family and friends step up and support me with such incredible love, compassion and understanding that I am left feeling breathless with gratitude.

And now we have entered into the first week of January. The first week of 2015. It has been a difficult week. I was fortunate to get to spend New Years with my best friend in New York City, where I have decided to move to permanently this summer. I rekindled a friendship with an old high school friend and she renewed my inspiration to live a more purposeful and healthy life.

While I dreaded leaving my friends and family in the United States, returning back to my Saudi life was not as bad as I had expected it to be. Getting back into the routine of work was actually very refreshing. Though I struggled emotionally to explain to my friends here about my failed relationship (I had to re-tell the same story of our breakup over and over again, like scratching open the scab of a wound afresh each day), I got through it and now that I've purged myself of the story and the tears and heartbreak and guilt, I finally feel somewhat reluctantly ready to start my life over again.

In addition to feeling gratitude for my friends, my family, my students, my work, my health, my life, I have decided that my overall New Year resolution this year is simply one word:

Patience.

A great deal of my struggles this year were a result of my impatience. I was impatient to find love. I was impatient to become a "grown up". I was impatient with myself and impatient with others for not being on the same page as me. Impatience leads to making impulsive and selfish decisions. Impatience leads to making mistakes. Impatience leads to not listening to your heart.

This year I am going to work on this quality. I am going to work on patience. I must learn to wait. I must learn to listen. I must learn to see things through. I must learn to take my time. I must learn to see the big picture.

But it starts small.

So today it is a blog post.

It is my hope that through cultivating more patience in my life, I will learn to be a more committed person. More committed to my personal, emotional, physical and professional goals. I know now that I am not a perfect person (try as I might to act like one). But as Coach Ladouceur says in the film written about his life as a successful high school football coach, When the Game Stands Tall, "We're not asking you to be perfect on every play. What we're asking of you and what you should be asking of each other is to give a perfect effort..."

Perfect effort.

To me that means I may continue to fall short of my goals and expectations, but I will not stop putting in effort. I will not quit. I will not let my mistakes and failures define who I am. I deeply regret the hurt I have caused someone I cared deeply about, but I am going to strive to be better. I am going to use that failure to fuel my efforts in the future. Every day is a new day. Every day is a chance to put forth a perfect effort.