Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Are you making a New Year’s Resolution? Shouldn’t every day be a day of resolve? A chance to grow in some way or another?
Why live a whole year in one day? The span of 24 hours is overwhelming enough - let alone 8765.81 hours, an entire year’s take - flying your way like a long freight train on a lonesome little speck of tracks called Jan. 1, 2015. Or for that matter, 2016, when I decided not to write another story on this bland subject, but instead, use last year’s article on some social media outlets?
The most popular New Year’s Resolutions, according to USA.gov, are to lose weight, volunteer to help others, to quit smoking, get a better education, get a better job, save money, get fit, plan to eat healthier, manage stress, manage debt, take a trip, drink less alcohol, and to become more environmentally conscious – by doing things like recycling, reusing, and reducing.
Health online lists all these in “Ten healthiest New Year’s Resolutions” feature slideshow except getting a better job, staying in touch, and becoming more environmentally conscious.
And according to Time, the only two above-listed resolves that aren’t broken are getting a better job and becoming more environmentally conscious. Meanwhile, spending more time with family is a resolution that’s broken that made the Time list. Although by the time this New Year's rolls around, Time's litany of broken promises will have been three year's old. I doubt that the minds of most folks have changed all that much within the span of only a few years, so Time's list isn't dated material, as far as I'm concerned.
About.com dittos these lists, but adds “getting organized”. I guess getting organized is important enough to make one of these lists; but so unimportant that it didn't make the others. So don't sweat getting more organized in 2015. Stay frazzled and bewildered. At least you'll be part of the rest of humanity if you do.
Perhaps a more pragmatic approach would be to throw all of these listed items that appear on my list of lists - each and every one - on an `overall list' of New Year's Resolutions. Then, throughout the year keep them in mind somehow and try to work on them in a piecemeal fashion. Don't eat the entire pie at once, take only a piece and save a piece for tomorrow, a piece for the day-after-tomorrow, and so on. . . .Or, don't catch all the fish in the lake in one afternoon. Leave some swimming down there so you'll be able to fish again tomorrow, and even for long after that.
Be practical and don't overwhelm yourself. If on a good day, you happen to work say, five or six of a list of 12 or 15 overall resolutions into your day, you'll be playing some great baseball in life's game - enough to get you in the MLB's 'greatest batters ever' category, in fact, if you're making an analogy to actual MLB batting statistics.
Think of it this way: If you really pump up that budget entry resolution on a lot of days between Jan. 1, 2015 and June 10, 2015, you'll have extra cash burning a hole through your checking account so you can actually attend a number of MLB games this coming summer. And of course, there are microcosmic lists within some of these - money talks, and a litany is all about personal financing. An article claims that if you follow through on their resolutions, you'll become $1,000 richer by the time the next New Year's rolls around. In her business-oriented / financial wherewithal list, Allison Martin of MoneyTalksNews has pointers in making your own personal budget come up in the black rather than the red, including cutting out the booze and adopting a healthier lifestyle, which appear on other lists.
Other money-saving entries Martin lists include: renegotiating your debts, planning your meals, scrapping business loyalties, developing a spending plan, and implementing a new shopping strategy.
Ah, but aren't New Year's Resolutions meant to be broken? Be honest now, as disgusted as you feel every year by breaking your resolution, isn't there something good about it, too? Isn't it fun puffing on a cigarette with your fellow workers and seeing them happy that you're out in the cold with them, again, after two weeks of your sweating it out without tar and nicotine? Yeah, you're back with the pack. COPD be damned!
Doesn't that first Big Mac taste great after a week's worth of rabbit food? Why not make it a big juicy steak? Why mess around with burgers after this ordeal you've put yourself through with your silly "I'm going to eat healthier" resolution?
And although you spent a walloping amount of money on those Saturday morning-into-afternoon shopping sprees with your BFFs, isn't it nice to see them again and buy all those brand new clothes? Sure, you made a resolve to budget better, but let's leave shopping off the list, for now, at least. . . .Don't look at the sales slips, look at those brilliant colors and fab fabrics, girl!
Isn't it nice, after a January penance of watching all those bowl games and all those NBA basketball games by yourself, all lonesome, lonely and dry as a desert whirlwind in your man cave, seeing all your buds again, at the End Zone Sports Bar? Yeah, I'll have a draft, Ralph, and get one for Pete and Bob, too!
So own it: The best part about making a New Year's Resolution is breaking it. And did you ever notice that there is no plurality to this thing. It's never "Resolutions," but always the lone, singular, solitary "Resolution"?
That's why I'm not making any resolution this year. I quit smoking two years ago — in mid-December - completely by happenstance (and since I've reposted it for the big 2016 rah-rah, three years now, and still without a cancer stick). Anyhow, to make a long story short, I got into trouble for littering. Yes, littering as in throwing my cigarette butts all over the place. Wherever and whenever the last cigarette I smoked happened to be. And I haven't smoked since. But I've been chewing on these Walgreen smoking lozenges like a hungry squirrel. And no, this year's resolution doesn't include giving up the Walgreens nicotine lozenges. I like the cinnamon, but the cherry doesn't taste too bad.
So we’ve come full circle. Am I making a New Year's Resolution? Yeah, when hell freezes over. And by the way things are going in the world these days, it just might do that.