"2008, One Day at a Time" on HuffPo, or Resolution Solution

My last Huffington Post post of 2007, on a more personal note, entitled "2008, One Day at a Time." I forgot to say that last year my friend Brett and I hosted a Resolution Dissolution party. There, I felt like I was the only person actively breaking my resolutions cause I had actually made some, and, well, breaking a resolution to not drink, I think I did pretty well at. All I remember is slurring my words and eating the best-tasting pizza of my life.

I find New Year's Eve a bit overrated generally, the whole planning and going out and great expectations. But I think even more overrated are New Year's resolutions, because what I am realizing more and more is that we can start to make changes in our lives immediately...if we want to. There are things I've talked about for years (like, oh, my apartment) that I know I have some psychological block about working on, but I also know that when I get motivated, I'm very stubborn, very determined. Yet mixed in with that is some inherent inclination for self-destruction, to see what would happen if I try to go, in Sara Schaefer's terminology, to rock bottom. There is a part of me that will probably always find rock bottom seductive, in part because then you can only go up, and in part because if you hit rock bottom, no one has any expectations of you, least of all yourself. Trying and failing, vs. not trying at all, has its allure, but (and this is not a resolution, more an affirmation) I want to try and remember that there is still value in trying, no matter the outcome. That perhaps the trying is what's most important, not the outcome. That's not an easy thing for someone as goal-oriented as I am to remember, but I'm working on it, and for 2008, I'm going to try to accept that doing my best is the best I can do.

This year was a big one for me in many ways, but two of the biggest are that I stopped drinking alcohol (February 13) and, even more challenging, gave up my 4-6 liter-a-day Diet Coke habit (October 4).

I'm not an alcoholic (though I come from a family that's struggled with alcoholism) yet when I found myself doing a podcast interview in February, drunk on martinis, my mind reeling as I tried to stay coherent, I knew something had to change. I decided that that was my last night of drinking, and so far I've kept to that promise. The toughest part hasn't been abstaining from alcohol so much as dealing with people's ideas about a girl who doesn't drink. When I'm out at a bar and a guy offers to buy me a drink, asking for a seltzer seems to signal that I'm no fun. "What do you want in it?" a guy asked me recently.

"Seltzer," I replied, receiving a look of disappointment from him. Drinking has so become the norm that those of us who choose not to, whether for a day or a lifetime, set ourselves apart from the crowd.