New year

Yesterday was my birthday, so it makes sense that my personal new year starts today.  My New Years resolution is to write everyday and post at least once a week. Most resolutions start off with enthusiasm and determination, but by February, the treadmill has become a tread-nil and the jumbo bag of chips is taking up space in the grocery cart once again.

I actually have made at least two resolutions that stuck around.  I actually do go "workout" at least 4 times a week and I did write a "poem" about Sarge the dog  every day for year.  I use the terms "workout " and "poem" loosely, because, arguably, my workouts are not all that...workout-y and the Sarge poem were really just rhyming phrases.  But I did write one of them every day for a year.  You try it and see how you do after a couple of weeks and then tell me they are not really poems!

I have writing topics in my head, but I over-think stuff and get stuck.  I try to get too pedantic and critical.of my erudition and start to use words like "pedantic" and "erudition" instead of just writing my thoughts.  So expect my posts to be a little disjointed and tangential sometimes.  Otherwise, they start to sound as if I am writing reports for juvenile court (a task I have done frequently) and I start to write run-on sentences and use terms like "tangential"...

Now that I have gotten myself back to the correct frame of mind for my blog-style, here is what I have been thinking about lately:

There are some pressing questions the world has long debated. You know, stuff like the chicken or the egg; is there really a God, (or if you are a dyslexic existentialist, is there really a Dog); when do you actually use a semi-colon in a sentence; and my personal favorite, which way does the toilet paper roll hang?   Over the top or down the back?  (The correct answer is over the top, for Dog's sake).

My other personal favorite pressing question is  Nature or Nurture.  According to Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places or Arnold Swartzanegger and Danny DeVito in Twins, nurture wins out. I thought this way myself for a long time. I wonder if every naive psychology student thinks they have it all figured out.  I had the nurture v nature discussion once with my Great Uncle Al.  Uncle Al was the youngest of ten  He was a psychiatrist when every other sibling was a minister or a minister's wife.  He used to say that he become a psychiatrist in order to take care of all those crazy minister!  When I told him my thoughts on nurture trumping nature, he just laughed and said, "Just wait". He was that kind of guy  Very droll and thoughtful.  Miss him...

Now I get what he meant and I think we are set up for our potential by nature, and nurture helps us to reach that potential,  I think that very good nurture can ameliorate bad nature, but I think that very good nature doesn't stand a snowball's chance against terrible nurture.  But mostly I think that nature wins out in the end.

Since this started off as a blog about having MS, I can safely say that nature can sometimes kick you butt, but I as a psychotherapist, I know that nurture, and specifically connections and attachments can go a log way in managing what nature hands you.

Tomorrow I will write more about my own family and seeing nature being created though nurture, but for today, I hace net my resolution goal and I feel proud!