Word-obssessed

Every year, I draw up a list of resolutions. Yeah. I'm one of those. Years ago, I would put them down, black and white. A nice piece of paper, my favorite pen, my best handwriting position, the room to myself. Ah, I relished those moments. Recently, though, I could only draw up the list inside my head, reasons being: I am very busy on extremely useful tasks, there are just no quality paper anymore these days, my writing hand has metamorphosed rendering it unfit for strenuous writing, my head needs to be utilized more, etc.

Anyway, one resolution that has appeared time and again in my head-drawn list, like that sneaky ghost that is obsessed with the kitchenware, is to be this:

If I read this word in passing, I would take it meant possession of the otherworldly kind. And so I always veered towards another word. I used this word a lot in my head, too, in various degrees of intensity, as the need applies. Easy. The word is called chill. 

"K, be chill."
"For God's sake, be chill!"
"You really can't afford to be chill, can you? You are hopeless."

And then this word came: SELF-POSSESSED. It's elegant, strong, earnest. A little bit archaic, perhaps, but it sounds very official. I like this word. I want this word. I want to be this word. I am not this word. And so there it is, in my imagined list, waiting to come into being. I imagine myself writing the word in my resume, in my biography, in my life. Look at the example Google gave, "I'm usually pretty self-possessed during an interview." Pfft. Well, good for you, sentence-samples-giver. I am not self-possessed during interviews!

Seriously, though, I turned 27 this year. And when I was 20, this age meant a lot of deadlines for me. Marriage-wise, career-wise, academic-wise, family-wise. So many wise-s. And I was dead serious about these deadlines, too. They mattered to me and I was anxious (bad anxious) for this day to come and I haven't beaten any of them.

Then I really did turn 27. Marriage-wise. Nope. Academic-wise. Not decided. Career-wise. Still working on it. And for someone who thinks being self-possessed is just another resolution on the way to the Recycle Bin, I think I've pretty much arrived to its beautiful, heavenly gates, at the very least. Sometimes I think that as we get older, we develop a better tolerance to disappointments. A higher threshold. It doesn't sound very nice. But that's what makes us adults, right? To rise above our re-routed deadlines with grace. Self-possessed much? I think so.