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Resolving to Resolve Posting Date: Jan 4 2009 1:16PM Keeping your New Year’s resolutions can be a challenging task, almost as challenging as drafting your resolutions in the first place. Anyone experienced with making that list knows that it is often far more difficult than it seems.
You would think that of all the things in the world that should be easy to do, resolving to do something positive in the next twelve months should be among the most simple. You pick something you’re not very good at – such as keeping your weight down or not drinking to excess – and you resolve to get better at it. Easy-peasy.
Except … except you need to strike the right balance between ambition and realism. You need to determine whether you are shooting for a broad, warm-and-fuzzy sense of improvement or whether you will bind yourself to a more measurable, black-and-white, fail-pass target. You have to determine how honest you want to be with yourself; it’s relatively easy to admit that you’re not in peak physical condition while it is rather harder to look in the mirror on New Year’s Day and determine that what you really need to do is grow a personality that doesn’t make your family members dread holidays. You need to figure out if one big resolution is better than a number of smaller resolutions.
By the time you navigate the resolving process, it could easily be Valentine’s Day and you’ve already pissed away six weeks of your fifty-two, so you’re pretty much doomed before you start. Better to just forget the whole thing. Unless …
Unless you have a handy menu of resolutions at your fingertips, a list from which you can select, a la carte style, to create your very own meal of self improvement. So as a public service to befuddled resolvers everywhere, we offer the following choices. Let us know how it goes.
- I will lose ten pounds, or get heavier trying.
- When I fart audibly in public, I will not blame the nearest dog, cat, baby or senior citizen, nor will I drag my shoe across the floor saying, “See? See? It was my shoe on the floor!” I will own up and accept responsibility cheerfully by hollering, “My waft! Tally-ho!”
- I will unburden my appendix by refusing to swallow mysteriously hard bits of meat, particularly from chickens, definitely from hotdogs.
- I will do my part to kick-start the slumping economy by following the advice of leading economists and either leveraging my lifestyle beyond my means or spending no money whatsoever.
- I will not shave any domestic animals for the purposes of personal entertainment.
- I will not watch pornography on the pay-per-view channel now that I realize that movie titles appear on my cable bill.
- I will not drink alcohol to excess, nor will I avoid its charms.
- I will not make major life decisions based on song lyrics written by anyone who spells his or her name like it’s designed to appear on a license plate.
- I will allow myself to use no more than two exclamation marks a month, not counting October which is the international month of the exclamation.
- When it itches, I will scratch it. Comfort over embarrassment.
- I will not invade any foreign country, except for Sweden which has been asking for it for years now.
- If the television remote does not work, I will realize before it is too late that I am actually holding a cell phone.
- I will not eat anything with a face still attached to its tasty bits.
- I will not refer to any part of my body using a nickname unless it happens to be a really good nickname like The Duke or Mr. Snuffleupagus.
- Having learned my lesson, I will not do anything into the wind.
- I will sing the body electric, trip the light fantastic and paint the town red.
- I will gargle life straight from the bottle.
- I will spit thunder and crap lightning.
- I will begin preparing next year’s New Year’s resolutions on St. Patrick’s Day. |
