We are not even through January, and I am already on my way to breaking a couple of New Year’s resolutions, while the lawyer in me is deftly attempting to explain that I simply did not get the wording quite right when drawing up this mental contract in the first place. You didn’t really mean you were going to bike EVERY morning… What you actually MEANT was every morning that the temperature is above 60, provided it follows a full night of uninterrupted sleep… when you feel like it… maybe. It has me wondering if next year’s resolution should involve some kind of notarized contract… or a resolution about being more resolute.
Maybe I just need to take baby steps and start with resolutions like reading more books, or traveling more: things that I really want to do anyway and have been tending toward, but for which I perhaps just need a little extra push to work on logistics. Though, that kind of feels like cheating… you know, like if Little Man gave up eating broccoli for Lent or follows through on his actual resolution this year to “catch more lizards”. (Here, the lawyer in me is giving her two cents again and informing me that this kind of resolution would give good cover for doing these activities instead of maybe washing the clothes or working on editing that story I’ve been neglecting for way to long. You HAVE to read this book! It’s a resolution for Pete’s sake! Drop that laundry basket!)
If it is not yet obvious, I am bad at New Year’s resolutions. I SUCK at New Year’s resolutions and always have. When I was younger, I would proudly announce my intentions along with my friends and family, only to be completely distracted away from them within the first few weeks of the year, to then remember them around December 31st when coming up with resolutions for the next year (What was last year’s resolution again? Oh… yeah… well…). And… now that I think about it, it is not that I am not resolute. Just ask Little Man: I once spent 4 hours sitting at a table with him trying to get him to eat ONE piece of cooked bowtie pasta. There are two morals to that story, by the way: 1. once you pick your battle, you need to stick with it if at all possible (in the end he did eat the pasta, nonchalantly said it “wasn’t too bad”, then wandered off to bed as I sat tapping my forehead against the table) AND 2. for the love of sanity, be selective in picking your battles.
I have decided it has less to do with being resolute and more to do with balance and fitting one’s resolutions to one’s personality. So, this year I am officially voiding my New Year’s Eve resolutions (YES, Lawyer Me, I CAN do that. A contract between two parties… or in this case 3: me, myself, and I… may be rendered null and void if both… or all… parties consent to do so, which, in this case, they… we… are more than happy to do!) and opting for a solution that better fits me. My new resolution is to NOT make a New Year’s resolution, but to instead wake up each morning and to try to tackle the things I resolve to tackle that day. In this way, I will avoid that feeling of utter defeat which inevitably awaits me at the end of each year and attempt to, instead, confine my shortcomings and triumphs to one day at a time… Wait…did I just make a resolution to make 365 resolutions?
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