That Kind of Woman

“I will be a new me – get fit, lose weight – a new me shall reigneth, like a phoenix emerging from the ashes of my old life and flapping off. Behold, I am woman and phoenix both, but not in a mutanty way, and yes, I have indeed lost my train of thought.”

Miranda S2 E1, ‘The New Me’ (2010)

What a phoenix apparently looks like according to fotographic1980 at freedigitalphotos.net. Pretty, no?

I was recently informed by a good friend of mine that her favourite holiday (defined – I did ask – as any commercialised seasonal celebration) is New Year, a statement which very much surprised me. Surely, I was thinking, all it really consists of as an occasion is counting down the last few seconds to midnight, possibly mumbling one’s uncertain way through a verse or two of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and then spending the next few weeks writing down the date incorrectly while watching fledgling resolutions inevitably crumble and fall. Not so, according to my friend: resolutions are, she told me, a key component of why she values New Year so highly; deciding the challenges upon which she wishes to embark is exciting, and likewise, recalling the resolutions of the previous January and the efforts made towards them during the year is fulfilling.

It was an outlook with which I found little common ground. As a child, I used to have some fondness for New Year’s resolutions, using coloured gel pens to detail them in the official Jacqueline Wilson diaries I received for Christmas,¹ but after a few years ticked by, they simply became synonymous in my mind with inevitable failure. I stopped making them. Why bother when I could never manage to keep them? And here we have the key difference between my friend and me; she actually keeps hers.

I’ll admit that there followed quite a twinge of jealousy on my part. How come she can manage it while I never could? It’s a question to which, having given our conversation some thought, I think I might now have something of an answer – and, conveniently, right on time for the launch of this next year as well. My problem is trying to run – or indeed, trying to be an Olympic-grade sprinter – before I can walk.

Allow me to illustrate. There’s an episode of Miranda in which the eponymous heroine decides to altogether reinvent herself. She explains the plan to her best friend Stevie thus: “I’m going to be the kind of woman who – you know, the kind of woman that just leaps out of bed and just does that –” she performs a casual head movement familiar to the viewer from numerous shampoo adverts “– and their hair looks perfect. They then grab a homemade muffin out of their Cath Kidston polka-dot biscuit tin and head to work wearing trainers at the bottom of a skirt suit, to show off they’ve power-walked in. They have pot plants that don’t die on them. Their fruit bowl isn’t full of three-week-old, rotting pears, because they actually eat the fruit. They have day bags, evening bags, and a clutch, you know? They just grab a wheatgerm smoothie in between work, because that’s enough to keep them going, even though at lunchtime they jogged, and enjoyed it – yeah, because they don’t have flesh that moves independently to their main frame. Yeah. And finally, they have easy access to pens, to finish a crossword at a bar, where the man they decided to take as a lover the night before says to them, ‘Hey, last night was great.’ You know, I’ll be that kind of woman.”

On this occasion, as on so many, I find myself relating to Miranda so neatly and absolutely that it almost aches. Even if my idea of That Kind of Woman isn’t quite the same as hers, I still have one, and, moreover, one remarkably similar in format: I’ll be the kind of woman who gets up early enough to prepare a healthy breakfast and a similarly healthy packed lunch to take onto campus, you know? They finish reading all the set text for their lectures with days to spare and also devour half the suggested secondary reading, about which they have numerous clever opinions. They sport, day to day, a varied repertoire of interesting, pretty hairstyles, are always stylishly dressed, and know how to paint their nails without smudging them. They keep themselves well-informed about current affairs. They return texts and emails promptly. They are never late for Bible studies (or, indeed, for anything else) and have always thoroughly prepared the passage in advance. Every day, they have early-morning prayer sessions, during which they do not get distracted or fall back to sleep. Their relationship with Jesus is so evident that virtually everything they look at becomes a Christian.² You know, I’ll be that kind of woman.

And I think the trouble with the attitude I have traditionally had towards New Year’s resolutions is that I have seen them as vehicles for achieving this idealised model. No resolution is an end in itself; each comes with the baggage of being a component quality of That Kind of Woman, so that my failure to keep any given resolution is wholly tied up with my failure to be That Kind of Woman. If you’ve been following this blog from the start (or have been studious in your reviewing of archived posts), you’ll know I have a fear of starting things I know won’t be perfect.³ The loftier the goal, the less inclined I am to reach for it, and being That Kind of Woman is a lofty goal indeed – not simply, moreover, because it’s very difficult to be That Kind of Woman, but because That Kind of Woman does not, in fact, actually exist.

Consider Miranda. During the episode, she does actually manage to tick off all the items on her list of what That Kind of Woman is like, and turns to the camera with a triumphant, “I did it!” Nevertheless, seconds later, she falls off a stool and ends up covered in cream cake, in true ridiculous Miranda fashion. We realise she was never really That Kind of Woman at all. Moreover, this fact does not come across because Miranda actually specified that falling off stools and ending up covered in cream cake is not the kind of activity in which That Kind of Woman engages; this is, rather, simply understood from the overall picture of That Kind of Woman which Miranda presented. Being That Kind of Woman is not limited to fulfilling a list of requirements, or keeping a list of resolutions. It’s a whole idea, and exactly that – a figment of Miranda’s own imagination, and of mine.

What happens, then, if we take That Kind of Woman out of the picture when it comes to New Year’s resolutions? Well, for starters, they become far more self-contained. No longer is the failure to keep one a blow at my whole identity. Leading on from that, they become more attainable, as individual, measurable goals, rather than small corners of an impossibly large and vague one. Less, ‘a new me shall reigneth’ (which is grammatically horrible anyway – sorry, Miranda) and more, ‘here’s a specific thing that I think it would be good for me to do, and so I’m going to make a commitment to try hard to do it.’ Suddenly, I’m not nearly so scared to make them.

On which note, you may be wondering what I’m actually resolving to do this year – and, even if you aren’t, I’m afraid I’m going to tell you:

1) Become a blood donor. I am slightly scared of needles when they are left in for any substantial amount of time, but I tend to feel that other people’s lives are a tad more important than my squeamish scruples, and have made an appointment accordingly.⁴

2) Read one fifth of the Bible. I’ve read a lot of the Bible, but I’ve not yet been through it cover to cover. I tend to feel a Bible-in-a-year programme, popular as they are, would involve covering too much ground too quickly, and I wouldn’t be able to devote as much time as I’d like to each passage, so I tracked down a schedule of daily Bible studies that lasts two hundred and sixty weeks, or near enough five years.⁵ I start on Monday. It’s going to be amazing.

3) Be on time for things. I’m so bad at this, and it’s simply selfish. Any movement towards being more prompt, more reliably, has surely got to be a good thing.

So there you have it. Sincere thanks go to the friend I mentioned earlier – if you’re reading, you’ll know who you are – for encouraging me so much in this respect. Here’s to a year of leaving behind That Kind of Woman and the paralysis she causes, and instead setting my eyes and my heart on Jesus, who is not only a better model to emulate, but is actually able to bring about positive changes in who I am. I will never be like That Kind of Woman, but, by the grace of God, I will one day be like my Lord.⁶

Footnotes

¹ I had no idea you could still get them, but apparently so: http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/9780857531995.

² An expression stolen, I will freely admit, from Andy Croft.

³ See ‘Things of Which I Am Afraid’ under ‘August’ in the box on the right-hand side.

⁴ If you happen to have any inclination to do the same, you can find out more and register as a donor on the NHS Blood website: https://beta.blood.co.uk/.

⁵ I purloined the schedule I intend to use, following much online searching, from some church or other, http://southvalleychurch.com.au/5-year-bible-reading-plan/, so many thanks to the people there.

⁶ See Romans 8, for instance: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+8&version=ESVUK. I draw your attention particularly to 16-17, 23, and 29, but do read the whole chapter, because it’s wonderful.