It’s New Year’s Eve, an hour before midnight. And whereas I’ve had more energy today than I did yesterday, I’m ringing in 2020 sick with a sinus infection. Currently I’m in my pajamas, curled up in my parents’ living room drinking hot tea. Mom’s in her chair in her nightgown on Facebook, and Dad’s on the couch watching the ball drop in New York City with a toothpick in his mouth. Our family dog is passed out on the floor. Every now and then, she farts.

It’s an enviable situation, I know.

This afternoon while running errands I stopped by the library to check out a book called As: A Surfeit of Similes by Norton Juster (the man who wrote The Phantom Tollbooth). Then, after I dropped off a late Christmas gift to and visited with my friends Justin and Ashley, I came home and read it. Talk about delightful. Y’all, it’s a children’s book, but if you like words and rhymes, it’s for you. I walked away from it both smiling and inspired.

As happy as a pig in shit. (That’s a simile, Mom, a comparison using like or as. But, to be clear, not one that’s used in the book.)

One simile that IS used in the book is “as rough as a gale,” a gale being (I found out thanks to Google) a very strong wind. (A very strong wind as in weather, mind you, not as in what happens when our dog’s sleeping.) Anyway, this made me think of Dorothy Gale, the main character in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And whereas I don’t know if L. Frank Baum intended to give Dorothy a surname that correlates perfectly to her life being turned upside down (ultimately for the better) by a tornado, it certainly was and is fitting. What stands out to me even more, however, is the fact that Dorothy means “gift of God,” the implication of Dorothy Gale being that the tornados, the storms in our lives, are sent to us from heaven not for our destruction, but rather for our betterment.

This sucks to think about, I know.

This afternoon Justin and Ashley and I discussed our New Year’s Resolutions. And whereas all of us agreed that if you want to change something in your life you can do it any day of the year–you don’t have to wait until January 1–we all had things we’d like to see happen in 2020. In addition to the usual suspects like getting in better shape, I’d like to 1) finish this blog on March 30th, 2) start turning it into a book, and 3) buckle down on two other (young adult fiction) books I’ve begun but have neglected because–quite frankly–they terrify me. Why do they terrify me? Because, for one thing, I’m afraid they won’t be good enough. For another, I’m afraid they’ll be too good. Like, I avoid them because I believe they have the power to change both me and my life.

I think this is why most of our resolutions “fail,” why we don’t follow through. Because deep down we know that if we really stick to something–anything–it will transform us. It will turn our world upside down. Earlier tonight I looked up WHY we celebrate New Year’s when we do and found out that there’s no ASTRONOMICAL reason for it. Granted, January 1 falls nicely between the Winter Solstice (on December 21/22) and the earth’s perihelion (on January 5, when we’re closest to the sun), but that’s not it. Rather, we celebrate New Year’s in the month of JAN-uary as an homage to the Roman god Janus, the god of doorways and beginnings. Janus being the two-faced god with one face looking toward the past and one face looking toward the future. Anyway, that’s the deal. Whenever you walk through a doorway into a new world, you MUST leave your old world behind. Dorothy couldn’t take Kansas (or her loved ones in it) to Oz.

This fact that truly committing to change not only changes us but also our world and requires that we like Dorothy go alone is, again, why I think we tend to 1) keep our resolutions rather surface and 2) soon end up dropping them. (Statistics show that eighty percent of people give up on their resolutions within six weeks.) It’s also why I think the divine so often has to send storms into our our lives. Most of us need to be “strongly encouraged” to change. Recently I wrote about how we need our challenges, and this is what I meant. We need a good swift kick in pants to get us going down our own personal Yellow Brick Roads. Because given the option to steal a witch’s broomstick (that is, do something that terrifies us) or stay at home and watch Netflix, most of us choose Netflix. It’s like life sees potential in us we’re not using.

So it sends us a tornado to set us on The Path.

For all these reasons (and not that anyone asked), my advice is terms of resolutions and life in general is–don’t let yourself off easy. Don’t say, “I want to lose five pounds” or “I want to eat better.” If you do, fine. These are noble causes that, if taken seriously, will change your life for the better. Still and instead, I recommend doing something that terrifies you, something that really has the potential to draw out your potential and turn your life upside down for the better. I think about my decisions to really commit to therapy and this blog and how, although for the rest of my life my weight is sure to fluctuate, these two choices have helped me find a space within myself that’s unmovable. A space that can weather any storm. I think about the power that one perspective truly embodied–like “my storms are a gift from God”–has to transform a person, the peace it can offer, and I think, What are you waiting for? I know it’s scary, but walk through your doorway. Leave your old world behind.