In light of my new year, no drama revolution (yes, it’s more, I believe, than a resolution), I have already begun compiling a mental list of what this entails. Through trial and decreasing error, I have discovered the best way to evade drama and all the life-blah it entails was to simply leave it with the silly people where it belongs.

But let’s be honest here. I have never, in my twentysomething years, been one to back down, hold my tongue and let bullying personalities walk all over me. Teenage years taught me much about how to keep this in check, but my dominant personality traits have proved difficult to keep in line in the 2007 year of no drama. I have had to compromise my almost light-switch need to say something with my desire to be more of the Merryl Streep among a crowd dotted with Anna Nicole’s: I’d rather keep it classy with wine than spend my days whining without class.

It’s in the trivial pursuits, if you’ll allow my shallow reference to the popular board game (that I sometimes play by just reading through the cards, though who doesn’t?) I don’t like to make judgments, so for lack of a better word, I regret I am confined to using a judgmental dialect to describe my hurdles. There have been juvenile people, blame-game people, head cases, drama queens of drama monarchies, pitifully miserable and petty people, all of whom have graced the pages of my life these last few months. List items numbers one, two and three of “no drama 101” include:

1. Not arguing the more trivial points of a silly argument. It is so much more fun to step back, grace forward and leave you be with your terrifically trivial contentions.
2. Not needing the last word. I’ll let you have it, so you can feel empowered to move forward and perhaps bully other people.
3. Acknowledging that I have enough great friends and people in my life that I do not need to pay any mind to the not-so-good friends. They can find other not-so-great people to be not-so-great with or decide to one day maybe grow as a person.
4. Letting people be what they want to be, and not pouring my energy and time into trying to reason with illogical people.

As a discretionary post-warning, I must express I distaste labels and judgments generally. I prefer to surround myself with encouraging, merry, clever and genuine people is all. I’ll keep it simple, look at it big picture style and use my carpe diem skills to instead be exciting, have fun and love as opposed to being menial, trivial, petty and childish, thankyouverymuch.

Cheers to the ladies out there who’ve got the smarts to win word wars, the skills to outwit the dim, but who choose, instead, to be kind, elegant and classy.