Resolved to Stay Skewed

I've never been the type to make New Year's resolutions; if something in my life needed addressing, why wait for a holiday to change it?

I attributed my attitude to general complacency but perhaps I'd just reached the age where I pretty much was what I was and trying to change would have been futile.

That is, until this year. Back last January, I got pneumonia and by that, I don't mean walking pneumonia or bacterial pneumonia, I mean weeks of of being sick before being put on a week of complete bed rest, followed by five days in the Intensive Care Unit.

I lost over a month of my life.

Not long before that, I had done a thorough cleaning on an old, unfinished closet in a mid-19th century house and inhaled something to which I'd had an asthmatic reaction which degenerated into pneumonia (the pulmonary specialist thought it most likely to have been bird or rodent droppings that caused it).

In any case, the result was me being sicker than I've ever been in my entire life.

What was interesting about the whole experience was that I came out of it Changed with a capital C.

I don't know if it was a physiological reaction or just the reminder of my mortality, but I wasn't the same person once I recovered.

Habits of a lifetime went away.

Things that I used to avoid became part of my regular routine.

Judgments about choices changed.

My openness to people was altered.

Even my physical self has morphed into something different than what it was before.

And people have noticed.

Comments have been made to me about the changes in everything from my punctuality to my drinking to my breasts.

Oh, yes, and the differences in my eating habits, my optimism and my lifestyle. And the list goes on.

So given all the alterations in who I am now, I think I will make a blanket resolution, not just for 2009, but for life.

Resolved: I've accepted who I've become even if it seldom resembles who I was for most of my life.

For better or for worse, it looks like Version 2.0 is what I'll be going with from here on out.

You got a problem with that?