Everyone...well, probably not everyone, but it's safe to say that a large number of Americans, and likely a lot of people around the world, make New Year's Resolutions. It's a ritual they perform at the start of every new calendar year. They're not cult followers, just dreamers.
New Year's Resolutions are destined, in fact are made, to be broken. They're usually lofty aspirations to: lose weight, gain weight, drink less, drink more, be nicer, be less nice, spend more time on a favorite past-time, spend more time with family, spend less time with family, finish a project, start a project, stop gambling, start gambling, remember a loved one's important milestones, run away to Key West and get lost, or even to clean out the clutter of your life whatever it might be.
99.9999999 % are destined to be broken.
It's guaranteed that you'll keep putting them off, forget about them, decide on January 2nd that they were foolish to begin with, or just say, "who gives a shit?" It's even possible that you'll have a stroke, someone you love will become more dependent upon you, or some catastrophic event will prohibit the fulfillment of your resolutions. Could happen! The positive benefit of these events is a diminished feeling of guilt for letting the resolutions go.
I am more than likely not going to clean out my garage and enjoy the added space for the whole year. I might toss enough junk to make it a little easier to get around my workbench. Sure, that's possible. Unlikely, but possible. I might even finish up one of the hundred projects I have in the works in one of many places. On a whim, I started to build a motorized Schwinn bike about five years ago. I could work on that. There's the electric grill for the deck that I repaired and needs to be put back together. That could happen sometime soon. There's the volume of short stories I've been meaning to get edited and published for several years. I'll probably keep adding stories, but the publishing thing... well... could happen in '17. Probably not. But it could.
Then there's the inside projects I've planned: start a podcast of music by musicians of my (and my followers/peers) era; put together a monthly show of substance, telling the stories of the most interesting artists in Trop music; clean out my studio so I can find a few of the songs I've written and work on them. There's those things and many more, that I'd love to accomplish this year. Hell, I'd like to accomplish them this week!
Reality check. If I were going to do these things, I wouldn't need a resolution. I'd need to get off my butt and get moving in a focused direction. I'd probably have to start with a major organization of my time. Instead of randomly charging here and there putting out fires, doing this or that on impulse, make a plan to spend a certain amount of time on each project, need, or desire, each day, week, or month, until one by one my dreams come true. My dreams of course, being to make some substantial headway on projects that I believe are important to me.
"Important to me." That's an ambiguous statement. What does it mean? What, I wonder, is really important to me? If something were that important, would I not have already focused enough attention on it to have accomplished it?
Maybe. But maybe not. Could it possibly be a matter of getting a grip on an over active mind which unfortunately ended up being trapped inside the body of a slug? That sounds like a fairly realistic answer to many of the situations I've mentioned here. I've come to realize that my ideas and wished for accomplishments, far outweigh my capacity to complete them. So, could it be that I've given up on the completion of many tasks, realizing that before any can be finished, my hyper-active brain will skip to another thing I'd "really like to do next?"
It's the dawn of another new year... "New Year". I hope you'll all accomplish most of the things you wish to do in 2017. Travel to those places you've dreamt of. Visit old friends you haven't gotten around to seeing in years, maybe decades. Buy a red sports-car instead of a gray "cross-over" vehicle. Go to the ocean, lake, river, or even creek pond, and enjoy doing nothing for awhile. Drink too much at least once this year. Party, let your tight-assed self-control go, and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised at how rejuvenated you feel after you sober up.
Here's my New Year recommendation. Don't bother with a New Year's Resolution unless it's to resolve not to make any. Less guilt, more peace of mind. After all, you and I haven't altered our habits in decades. That should tell the wise individual that they're probably not going to change overnight, at the start of a new calendar or not. Start living today, in a way that you'll be able to look back on 2017 as a year that was "one hell-of-a ride!"
Happy New Year!
