New Years Resolutions

I’ve never been a fan of the New Years Resolution.  Through the years, I’ve silently laughed at all the new people who suddenly crowded the gym on January 2nd. And I counted the days until February 1st when I would stop seeing those people and could finally stop bitching about the line for the treadmill at 6:30 in the morning.  And the people who resolve to eat healthy?  Sure, they’ll stock their refrigerators with lettuce and tomatoes on January 2nd, but most will be eating chips and buffalo chicken wings long before the Super Bowl. 

I don’t make resolutions at the start of a new year because I hate to fail.  I’m incredibly hard on myself and if I start something I can’t finish, it makes me feel ‘less than.’   And so, I won’t resolve to channel my mother and thoroughly clean my apartment every Saturday morning, because that particular obsessive/compulsive gene was not passed down to me.  And I won’t vow to become a good cook because the truth is, I don’t really enjoy cooking and much prefer dining out or having others cook for me.   

The fact of the matter is that I will not become a neat freak and master chef at the mere drop of the ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  So I won’t bother to try.  I do, however, believe that people can take steps to improve themselves in small ways and agree that the new year is a good enough place to start as any.  And so, I cleaned out my closet today and finally threw out the leather pants I haven’t worn since 1999.  They’re hot, and I think they still might fit but I’m not going to wear them and they’re just taking up space in my small closet.  And I threw out the multiple drafts of Just Friends With Benefits I had printed out during the revision process which added to my already cluttered living space.  My apartment still does not look like my mother’s but it’s something.  And I will go food shopping tomorrow and stock my refrigerator with enough food to prepare my own meals a few times this week.  I won’t make coq au vin but I can certainly heat up soup, make tuna fish and even grill chicken, the last one only if I’m particularly ambitious.   

For shits and giggles, however, let’s just say I did make New Year’s Resolutions.  Hypothetically speaking, of course, they might include the following:

 Write a blog a week

 Finish my second novel

Really get into football and not just use it as an excuse to drink beer on Sundays 

Live in the present and stop worrying about the “what-ifs”

Let go of the things and people who have hurt me in the past. 

Stop taking it all so personally.  If people I knew from high school and college can’t bring themselves to click “like” on my Facebook page or God forbid, buy my book, so what?  It doesn’t make it any less of an accomplishment that I wrote one and got it published.

Don’t take my own insecurities out on the people who care for and are good to me.

 Kick fear to the curb

 And what the heck:

Work out harder

Eat healthy

Channel my inner Susan (my mom) by cleaning my apartment like the president is coming to dinner

Become an awesome cook. 

It’s a hypothetical list, remember?

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