New Year's Re-Solutions

Back in the day when I was more apt to wake up January 1st underneath a table than in my own bed, it was easy to make resolutions for the upcoming year: all I had to do was plan to be less likely to repeat the mistakes I repeatedly repeated in the previous twelve months and then carry that plan through for a week or two; that was that.

Nowadays, though, since I’m such a responsible, upstanding member of the community, it’s far harder to develop a program that’s going to result in personal and professional improvement during the upcoming year.

Besides, I’m way too lazy and set in my ways to fulfill any plans I might haphazardly develop anyways.

Additionally, there’s something about the very idea of resolutions that bugs me. For one thing, it suggests I might be able to make myself do something against my own will, that I’d set my nose to the grindstone and behave as I think I ought to rather than as I’m inclined to.

Fat chance of that, frankly.

So, maybe instead of resolutions in that sense, I’ll imagine something like re-solutions, that is, finding or re-finding ways of solving problems I’ve already solved in one way or another already.

For instance, consider my “solution” to the ongoing challenge of entropy as it plays itself out on home and hearth. Generally, my strategy is to ignore things until they reach an acute state: like why fix the roof until it really starts leaking? A new “solution” might be to be more proactive; traditionally, then, I would say, “My New Year’s resolution is not to procrastinate so much.” Now, though, I’ll simply put it this way: I have no idea what I’m talking about, let’s just make it through today and worry about it tomorrow.

Or, in other words, Happy New Year, because after all, this one’s already better than last January 1, when the president was still George Bush.