Are you the type of person who makes resolutions every year? I was too.
Then I realized that I had developed a regular pattern that most folks who make resolutions have: I didn’t keep ‘em.
I would start out the year determined to eat better. Then, when out to lunch or dinner with friends, I would succumb to temptation. One fried crab cake and an ice cream sundae later, I would think, “Well, I blew it.” And then I would go back to eating, ahem, some not-so-great-for-me stuff.
Or I would make a list of all the resolutions I would have for my work. Like “Be more organized.” This would usually start out with a mammoth trip to Staples, because, you know, they’ve got that…then, armed with multi-colored office supplies, I would get to work.
But then reality would set in. I had to clean my office first. While going through piles of filing to be done or boxes full of yet more filing to be done, I would inevitably come across something like a note or email from a friend or a note to myself to do something else, and like a goldfish, which has absolutely no attention span, I would be off either calling the friend whose note/email I found or doing whatever I saw on the note to myself.
I’d come back in the office later or the next day and get really angry, stuff everything back in boxes, and decide that I would learn to work in utter paper-piled chaos.
Promising to get organized didn’t work for me either.
One year my husband and I decided that we would begin an exercise program. Heck, we would even exercise together. We tried working out in the mornings, which were good for me. But that led to him having to rush like crazy to get ready for work. So we tried the evenings, which were good for him. Being an early bird, I’m ready to drop over right after dinner. That time wasn’t working for me. We kept it up for a while, even hired a couple of personal trainers. It just didn’t seem to work out…and so neither did we.
I could have resolved to read more. But I love reading, and it seems to me that resolutions are usually things that you hate, but are forcing yourself to do because the New Year gives us all a clean slate.
Well, I’m done. No more resolutions. No more getting up on New Year’s Day with a pad of paper, a nice-writing pen, and dreams of delusion dancing through my head. I will no longer proclaim in a loud, assertive voice during the first week of January that I will definitely be keeping my resolutions this year.
So all of you folks at the gym who go regularly and are just waiting for the first couple months of the year to pass until the January resolution makers give up, keep paying their locked-in membership fees, and give you more time on the treadmill or elliptical—hang in there. You’ll have one less person you want to go away this year.
All you people running to Staples or another office supply store, you’ll have one less person in line ahead of you this year.
And everyone at the organic section of the grocery store, you’ll have one less cart to bump into.
Because I know who I am. And while this doesn’t mean, by a long shot, that I am lazy or irresponsible or a deadbeat, I know that I’m just not good at keeping resolutions.
When you sit down to write your resolutions this year, think of me, sitting down to not write mine.
Nope, instead, this year will be completely different. No more setting resolutions and then beating myself up for not keeping them. No more guilt. No more angst.
Because this year, my readers, instead of making resolutions, I’m going to be setting goals.
Yes, it is totally different. It’s not the same thing at all.
Is not…
Have a Happy and Joyous New Year!
Michele Wojciechowski, who has probably written down all her “goals” for the year and actually kept them so far, writes “Wojo’s World™” from Baltimore.