You have to listen to the answer.

My sister is a little Trojan horse full of wisdom.  She said something to me the other day that has really stuck with me - 'if you ask a question, you have to listen to the answer'.  It's so simple and so true.

This was in the context of:
ME: 'Does X have a new girlfriend?'
SHE: 'I don't know.  I just don't ask.  If you ask a question, you have to listen to the answer.  I don't want to hear the answer; I'd rather not know.'

She's right and I'm trying to bear this in mind all over the place.  I'm naturally curious (read: nosy) and bad at letting things go.  I want to know everything - or at least I think I do.  So, I'm always finding out things I don't actually want to know, and then kind of wishing I hadn't.

This, it must unedifyingly be said, often pertains to the online presence of ex-boyfriends.  It's too tempting - especially when pretty much all your exes are artists or musicians etc with some sort of a public profile.  So, I have unfollowed some people on Twitter; I have stopped going on Facebook.

I recently looked at an ex-boyfriend's website and saw a picture of his new girlfriend that made me feel weird and horrible all day.  We're on good terms, it's fine - but there were various things about it that unexpectedly upset me.  I kept wondering why I had even looked in the first place, what I was expecting to achieve other than heartache - and I had no idea.

I'm not going to do it again.  There's no point.  It's just another way of asking a question to which I don't want to know the answer.  It's also bad for the soul (and creepy).  So, I'm not going to do it any more.

This year, one of the best things I've done is to stop looking at the Daily Mail online.  Honestly, giving up that one weird little habit has made my life so much better.  It was one of those websites that I hated but used to spend a lot of time looking at - kind of out of habit, kind of without thinking, kind of because I hated it.

As part of the same campaign I stopped hate-looking at things on the internet in general (I'm sorry to say it used to be a pastime that took up a small chunk of my life): the Mail online, annoying bloggers, Facebook profiles of old acquaintances I actively dislike.

I've never quite managed to give up smoking, and I've never stuck to a diet (or even started one, really), but I have successfully improved my life by giving up hate-looking at the internet.  It's that simple.  (And it was a stupid thing to do in the first place, but so's taking up smoking.)

So, I'm saying it here.  A little resolution.  I'm not going to look up any ex-boyfriends on the internet any more.

I'm not going to ask questions to which I do not want to know the answers.  Not in any medium.

Side note: In the last couple of months, I have also taken up chanting (well, I'm trying).  When I told my best friend this, she replied 'how very Tina Turner of you', which baffled me.  I have come ridiculously late to Tina Turner; I'm not sure why.  So, this week, a couple of days after her birthday, I watched What's Love Got to Do with It? (mostly for the chanting).  I now can't stop watching videos and listening to her.  She's incredible, as raw and authentic as I want to try to be, in a small way, in all areas of my life.  Tina is a whole new untapped inspiration for me, a discovery I am very grateful for.