Starting 2024!

Usually, we are eating leftover holiday cookies while downing a Seven&Seven contemplating whether we should drive after that, but why go home early to whiny kids not doing homework when Facebook just announced school is cancelling due to a possible ice storm and there is no way anyone is walking the dog in that weather.  Forget about retirement.

Since I am a successful resolution rejector, I am revisiting a better method to be effective at committing to follow through with my intent.  Turns out this expectation of creating a list of annual failures dates back over 4000 years.  Credit the ancient Babylonians with saddling us with this need to make a list, check it twice and then two weeks later totally deny we had any intent of making change.  I doubt the Babylonians were using our same calendar system all those centuries of yore.  Did they celebrate the arrival of Santa Clause, the instant return of unwanted gifts, the drunken celebration of out with the old and in with the new and then an unpleasant meal with black-eyed peas and a promise to do better in the new year?  I think not.

The secret to a genuine resolution is to figure out a method to succeed.  I believe I found the loophole.  Create a list of things you never have or never will do and then commit to not doing them this year.  You can spend your self-guilt time wondering what it would be like to do or have done those things and then cheer yourself up for not doing them this year. Make it interesting:  Start an office pool of who can keep their resolutions the longest.  By March, you should clean up that easy cash.

This year I will quit smoking.  Granted I never started smoking and most likely never will, but no one will ask those details.  I can fake needing a smoke just as easily as faking the need to quit.  All the more reason to be excused from a dull meeting—I will take a stroll around the building and NOT smoke.  

This year I will get more sleep.  I actually get plenty of sleep, but no one has to know that.  Instituting a regular nap time will make more sense when I pair it with my resolution to get more sleep.  Adam, I would really like to help you with that project at 2 PM, but my resolution nap time is 1:30 to 2:30 PM.  You know how I need more sleep this year . . . 

This year I will reduce my stress level.  I am not, nor am rarely stressed, but all the stress type A folks just assume we are all stressed.  To not stress them out by not being stressed, I will assume the stress attitude and the de-stress myself by not cooperating in any hair-brain activity they create.  Sorry, I cannot participate in that, my resolution is to be less stressed.  Count me out while that vein in your forehead explodes.

By resolving to complete projects I never did before, I feel very accomplished at finally honoring resolutions that might actually hold up for the year.  Being an under achiever at things I have never done is surprisingly satisfying.  Not surprising are the crazy ideas a few buddies supplied me with as I asked what their intentions for the new year were:

Make a new friend a month.  WHAT?!  I am trying to unload dead weighted friends now.  Why on Earth would you want to add 12 more obligations to your phone log?!

Learn a decent party trick.  WHAT?! If you are attending parties that need tricks, you are at the wrong party. If you are learning decent party tricks, were your other tricks indecent or just so lame none of the friend-of-the-month club would invite you anywhere?

Try a new food each week.  WHY?! What is wrong with regular food each week? Your new monthly friend may not want to dine with you while eating horse hooves marinated in worm stock. Now that’s a party trick.

Cheers to your 2024.  May it be filled with grand success, accomplished resolutions and creative ideas to make things work.