My New Year’s Resolution is No Resolution

Well, that “Hap..Happiest Day….of the Yeaarrrr..” is over. No more baking cookies, no more wrapping presents, no more Christmas carols blaring over the work speakers.

Hopefully you all had a great holiday with all you did and did not do. If you wanted to be alone, I hope everyone left you alone. If you wanted to be with family and friends, I hope you pushed your way into their Christmas parties.

But now comes that tenuous time of the year. That week between celebrations when you know you’ve eaten too much and drank too much and talked too much and the only salvation left for you is….New Year’s Resolutions.

Everybody makes them. Everybody breaks them.

I myself don’t make them.

Too many years of disappointment breaking the vows I swore I would keep. Lose weight. Exercise. Get organized. All that nonsense that pumps you up one minute and bums you out the next.

I started re-adjusting my eating the beginning of 2017. No more half pies, no more packages of Oreos. No half pound of spaghetti noodles on my plate.  It has worked nicely, but slowly. So no need to vow to lose. It’s working all by itself.

Exercise? Too much snow to walk the dog that I can’t control and never walk anyway. There are two pieces of exercise equipment downstairs…now that we have a bigger TV there’s no excuse. We’ll see.

That’s why I don’t vow to change my ways every December 31st. It’s taken me 65 years to get this way, and if I’m not smart enough to get out of my own way that’s my own problem. I knew I needed to lose weight for my health, not for a bikini. I knew I needed to clean out the hoarder’s stuff in my downstairs, not for seeing what I had but so that I could walk to the bedroom without falling over something. Exercise is now on my list of to-dos, because the other day I knelt down and couldn’t stand up on my own. I am starting to have problems with tall steps, and walking to the bathroom and back at work isn’t on the list of exercise options.

So don’t promise yourself to do something for the New Year. Don’t feel you have to start on January 1st. If your goal is too far you’ll never reach it. Too high and you’ll never see it. Plan one thing one step of the time.

This is for your creative projects, too. Don’t say, “I”m going to write three novels this year.” Say, “I’ve got an idea for my first novel…let’s give it a go.” Don’t plan on painting your whole house…buy two gallons of paint and start with one room. And when A is met, you go to B. And on and on adnausium. Because that’s what we creative, tired, stiff human beings do. Just take one day at a time and give it all you’ve got.

Eventually you’ll be giving back the pounds you put on at Christmas.