No Resolutions
14 Jan 2011
I hear by resolve to not have resolutions this year. Every year I make those lists. And here’s how it’s gone in the past.
Annual Diet Resolution:
I will lose weight. I will eat fruits and veggies, only.
By 3 pm on Jan. 1 the ‘Cheezits or Die‘ hits. I need serious fuel. Orange dyed carbs, not leafy vegs. And how bad are a few Cheezits? Or a half a box. Imperative that the evidence is not out where The Prince Consort can see it. So eat the whole box.
Annual Exercise resolution:
Get up early to do that extra hard Yoga on public TV.
By 7 am January 1, I’ve overslept. And let’s be honest. Can it really be good to exercise before dawn? In the dark? Groggy? I’d probably end up stuck in Eagle pose until The Prince Consort gets up.
I have a perfectly good beginners Yoga DVD I can do anytime. So roll over and go back to sleep. Until the cat stands on my face.
House Cleaning:
Oh, please. I got serious about this one year. When our daughter, The Professor, was seven. Like a lot of things I did when she was young, I was trying to be a good mother and a good example. So for a whole month I did the index card chores system. 30 days of daily, weekly, and monthly chores. After completing each chore card, refile the blue daily cards to the next day, move the pink weekly to the next week, and the yellow cards to the next month.
By the end of one month, I stood in the bathroom trading stares with Goldie, the gold fish. She bubbled, a certain amount of panic in her gold fishy eyes. I took it she’d had enough of the weekly bowl dump. Living near the toilet was stressful enough. Being scooped out of her bowl weekly for cleaning, was making her frantic.
So being an animal lover. I trashed the cleaning system. The goldfish stopped racing around her bowl, and by the time The Professor was a teenager, she had developed the archeologist’s theory of clothes storage. Layers on the floor, dig for the right outfit. Oddly she became a Professor of Psychology.
Stop cussing:
Yeah. Like this #%$% one lasts more than ten minutes. Enough said.
Write instead of procrastinate:
Which would mean I wasted money on the Twain autobiography and the computer game? No.
Okay. That’s the flaw. I’m not setting down a resolution to write, and yet, what am I doing? I’m writing this blog. And I worked on my WIP, because out of curiosity, not because I had a resolution, I’ve been re-reading how to write books, and good fiction like Summer of Kings, or non-fiction like the Twain Autobiography. Reading well, makes me want to write.
I’m cleaning house because it feels good to have clean clear spaces to live in. No longer owning a gold fish, cats have no problem with having their litter box emptied.
Instead of a list I have to be responsible to, I’m going to be responsible to my better self. I’m going to strive toward whatever makes me a better person. What makes me worth the skin I’m walking around in. Whether that’s cleaning house, being nicer to everybody, losing weight and being healthier, or writing. And be open to anything more that makes me better.
Sigh, I suppose that means the no cussing is back on the table.
By the Way, after days and days of overcast, today the sun came out. I was up early, not to do yoga, and saw that sky-blue pink promise of sun. So I got out and walked. As I arrived back home, I was stared down by the doe who stamped her feet at me and ran to the backyard to wait for The Slacker to put out the corn. Which I did. Kath
