Bumping up the resolution(s)
Every year around this time, someone asks me about my New Year’s resolutions. Every year I reply that I don’t make them. It’s not that I’m opposed to the idea; it’s just that if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, January is peak season for the supernatural Department of Public Works. I know darn well that most people who buy a gym membership this week will let it lapse by the time spring is in the air. Besides, January 1 is an entirely arbitrary date on which to start a project. Why not my birthday, or the summer solstice, or some random day in March?
In any case, I have a marked propensity for beating myself up whenever I don’t achieve a goal, and giving up that bad habit is in itself something I aspire to. So rather than setting myself a bunch of benchmarks I feel guiltily compelled to try to meet, I’m taking a more gentle approach. I’m trying some new things, seeing what I think of them, and giving myself permission to let them drop if they don’t work for me. For someone more hard-charging, that might seem like a dilettante’s approach, an undisciplined dabbling that can’t be expected to yield results. For me, though, it’s a comforting reassurance that I don’t have to be perfect at everything I try or stick with something I don’t enjoy.
I’ve started to make a list of the things I want to try this year. It keeps shifting and getting longer, but here are a handful of highlights:
- take voice lessons
- visit Yosemite, with camera
- learn to play the drums
- get back to the UK
- be able to do a real pushup
- learn to ride a motorcycle
All of these are entirely reasonable, time and budget permitting. Now let’s see how I can make time and budget permit.
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