New Years Resolutions

I think long and hard about new years resolutions.  The reason for this is that I only ever commit to one thing at a time.  I pick something simple, that is very difficult, something that I think will take me around a year to get through.  So after thinking about it for 2 months I have my new years resolution.  It echoes in my head as "make the water run clean".  I think an easier way to put it would be to term it as "develop a sense of Grace".

[an aside]
Grace is one of the 4 tenants I have for living well.  They go in order as harmony, agency, bliss and grace.  Harmony is about finding your place in the world, living in such a way that your own existence isn't destructive to yourself or the people around you.  Agency is about fixing your life when it reaches a point where you become destructive to yourself or the world around you.  But agency is also how you move from harmony to bliss, the transition between simply existing well and being happy.  Bliss is about finding the thing that you truly want or truly love, and following that.  Whether that's a career goal, some hobby or another person.  In the end bliss is about being extremely happy, about it being bone deep, not just about existing.  Grace is about... being humble after locking all that other stuff in, you can alternately look at it as not taking shit from other people once you've gotten your own life in order.  There is a certain kind of person who gravitates towards happiness only to try and destroy it... so, gotta watch out for that kind of person.
[onto what I was talking about before...]

So... grace.  I feel like I need to get comfortable in my own skin again.  Pick one identity that I'm happy with and just be that.  Not try to sell myself as some other random thing.  Back in college I had a pretty clear identity.  Back when I was in Marin I had a pretty clear identity.  Here... I'm not so sure I've gotten that figured out.  The infamy I enjoyed in college as a womanizer is pretty much gone.  These days I'm not at the parties where I'd find them.  I have a reputation now for making excellent drinks... which isn't so bad.  Also a reputation as an excellent florentine fighter, and I've no qualms with that one either.  The thing is both of those reputations are really more facets of who I am now, rather then some kind of real identity.

So, to make the water run clean again I need to pull out all the toxic things in my life.  Trim the weeds as it were.  I have a lot of junk that I've got laying around my place, and inside my head from past identities.  I feel the need to just start letting things go, whether they are objects or memories and have the who I am now identity take shape from whatever is left over.  Kind of like an artist shaping granite.  Making a figure appear from a slab of rock by chipping away everything that isn't part of the final shape.

So we'll see how that goes.  Some of it will just be me taking the time to invest in spiritual practices, try and open my mind again, and re-attune.