You Say You Want a Resolution?
Hope Springs Eternal…,
Alexander Pope
What’s your New Year’s resolution? Or should I say, resolutions?
According to Forbes.com the most popular goals for 2024 are:
* Improved fitness (48%)
* Improved finances (38%)
* Improved mental health (36%)
* Lose weight ((34%)
* Improved diet (32%)
But the big question is: Will anyone stick to them?
For most of them/us, the answer is no.
Why?
Time? Focus? Lack of willpower? All of the above, perhaps? I guess it all depends on the individual.
My last year’s resolutions? I recently rediscovered it on my bedroom wall next to the 2023 calendar that’s scribbled with dates, appointments and ideas. A thumb tacked half a piece of yellow legal paper, it contains eight (Is that too many?) goals in no particular order:
* Write daily
* Read daily
* Make ErieCulture.Guru hot
* Exercise daily (long walks, push-ups)
* Finish Jessie (my young adult novel, begun three years ago)
* Pound my student debut
* Save more money
* Improve my language (i.e., less swearing)
How’d I do? About the only one I didn’t abandon after the first week was to save more money. Unfortunately, whenever I’d get a nice nest egg, some financial emergency would inevitably arrive out of the ether (usually vehicle related) that would crack, scramble, make an omelette of, and consume, my humble egg.
Try and try again…
My 2024 resolutions? Much the same as last year’s. But maybe this year I’ll put the list somewhere perhaps I’ll see it daily. That in itself might be an incentive to stick to them.
Yeah, right.
I wish I had enough courage to add another goal to my list: No television. I know if I actually stuck to that pledge I’d get so much more done in my life that would actually allow me to fulfill some of the resolutions that I tanked on. Yet TV for me is a crutch; I watch it and veg out after a long workday and it mellows me out before bedtime. Plus, as a burgeoning misanthrope/hermit, it appears to be my only social outlet. (I don’t do Facebook or any social media.)
If anything maybe I could compromise? Just stop recording shows and get my DVR recordings down to, say, 75%, rather than the 98-99% level it’s always at.
Irregardless of whether they’re kept or broken, isn’t the idea of resolutions good? It’s a time of self-reflection, acknowledging that there’s room for improvement in our lives and gives us positive goals to shoot for.
But how about this: Maybe the final resolution on our 2024 list should be that if we don’t stick to our pledges we don’t feel guilty for the remainder of the year?
Instead, we patiently wait.
And aim for 2025.
