What was your New Year's resolution?

January 6, 2012

It is the beginning of a New Year, and along with that New Year comes the usual onslaught of New Year’s resolutions. Someone on facebook posted the other day, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” I feel somewhat guilty about considering a New Year’s resolution, since the year is already almost a week old.

I have not made a New Year’s resolution in quite a while, and being out of practice, I decided to research some potential resolutions. With the help of Google, I found a few good ones. First, Huffington Post’s, Laura Schocker has a list and I do like number 5 on the list; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/01/new-years-resolutions_n_1178497.html#s583175&title=Remember_To_Breathe. Remember to breathe. This is a great one. I know a few people over the years who have forgotten to breathe, and I sincerely mourn their passing. If the truth be told, there are a few people who I sometimes hope will forget to breathe. That is unkind, I know, but I am beta testing a ‘sharing my feelings more often’ New Year’s resolution.

Resolutions are so popular the US government actually posts their top ten most popular ones. http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/New-Years-Resolutions.shtml . At least I thought they were the government’s top ten resolutions. As it turns out, it is a list of what the government thinks the top ten resolutions for American’s are. The fact that the government is tracking this information is disconcerting and perhaps an invasion of my privacy, not to mention the potential for abuse by the TSA in profiling air passengers. I can envision a TSA agent asking an unsuspecting traveler about his or her NYR (New Year’s Resolution), “What was your NYR this year?” The passenger, caught off guard and unsure of what the acronym NYR stands for, answers, “Umm, I dunno?”  To which the agent responds, “I am sorry, that answer is not accepted as one of the US Government’s official answers, documented on the NYR-one-zero list. Please report to ICE and cool your jets until an investigation is completed.”

However, I digress, which gives me two more possible resolutions to test. First, eradicate all clichés from my writing, and second, stay on target. In researching for this post, I read that only 12% of New Year’s resolutions are kept—apparently I am not the only one having trouble staying on target. Since there is such a low percentage of successful resolutions, I am searching for an easy to keep resolution; one that, if possible, cannot be broken. I am thinking of resolving to not keep my New Year’s resolution. Then when I break it, I will have actually kept it. This kind of folding back on itself logic scares me a trifle though. I am concerned that if I actually make this resolution and then break it (which really cannot be done), I will self-combust and only leave a pile of ash on the floor and a wisp of smoke in the air.

This idea is fraught with danger. If Beloved, my wife, finds that I have left a big pile of ash on the floor, she will kill me. Frankly, I do not want to die. Therefore, I will not use that one.

 The idea of breathing is a good one, but it seems like it might be just a trifle too easy.

I think perhaps I will fall back to a good old standby resolution, I will procrastinate less.

Oh wait, what is today?