Here it is again, a new year. Now is the time for making promises to ourselves that we know, full and well, we’ll never keep. It is time for making foolish resolutions to change our foolish ways.
Personally, I’ve never made a New Year’s resolution. I had thought about doing it this year, but my list of available resolutions to choose from continues to shrink. I know that there are plenty of popular resolutions out there, but most of them seem well suited to be surefire methods of attaining failure.
I would think that losing weight would be pretty high on the old resolution list. I’d bet it is really high on the “dreams not realized” list, too. I know that I need to drop a few pounds. Well, okay, more than a few … but not as many as my friend, Wayne Genghis. As long as I weigh less than he does, I feel pretty good.
I have been slowly taking pounds off, but that is because I am trying to change my eating habits instead of going on a diet (which is just a short-term fix for a lifelong problem). I certainly haven’t resolved to lose weight, and since I am already losing weight it would be kind of foolish to add in the pressure of a resolution to lose more.
Exercising more has got to be a popular resolution. I would think that exercise, for the most part, goes part-and-parcel with losing weight, but I suppose that it could be used just to stay in shape.
I used to ride my mountain bike a lot, which was great exercise. I even rode it in the winter, through the snow. The past few years I have only managed to get out on it a handful of times during the warmer months.
A couple of months ago I started a fitness routine that I had been doing fairly well with. Doing just one thing for exercise gets old, fast. I’d started spending a portion of my Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings with a weight machine. Tuesday evenings would find me on the treadmill. Thursdays I would do an aerobics session with a Wii Fit Board. Saturdays were spent with the stationary bicycle.
It all kind of came to a halt a couple of weeks ago when I slipped on some ice and cracked a rib. I guess that I could resolve to getting back into my exercise routine when my rib heals, but that just doesn’t seem like much of a resolution.
If I was still a smoker, I could resolve to quitting that. I was a pack-a-day smoker for nearly 20 years. Thankfully, I managed to kick that habit a dozen years ago. It was probably the single best thing I have ever done concerning my health.
If you’re a smoker and you want to quit, please make this your resolution. If I can do it, anyone can. No patch, no pills, no gum, it was cold turkey for me. Sure, I had tried quitting before and had failed, but the main thing is that eventually I was successful and I’m thankful for that.
I’m also thankful that I managed to give it up before the price of cigarettes went through the stratosphere. I remember thinking that a buck a pack was high. How people can afford to smoke and feed their families these days, I’ll never know.
It was the end of November in 1996 when I quit, so I can’t really call that a New Year’s resolution – close, but not quite.
I would resolve to stop drinking alcoholic beverages, and I’m sure that in my younger years (I’m not saying I’m old, I’m certainly not as old as Wayne) quitting drinking, or at least drinking less, would have been a great resolution to make, but I don’t really drink alcohol anymore.
I didn’t have a problem with drinking but it seemed like a good idea to give it up, so I quit drinking alcohol, for the most part, four or five years ago.
There has been quite a bit of evidence in the past few years that a glass of red wine daily has many health benefits, and I frequently have a glass in the evening, but just one ... well okay, there have been three or four nights when I’ve had two glasses.
I’m sure that there must be a number of things that I could resolve to do if I looked hard enough. I’m sure that if I could manage to keep these resolutions, I would benefit to one degree or another, but it just seems so foolish to me that we set ourselves up for a fall like this, every time the new year rolls around.
Perhaps an even more foolish thing is when we tell others about our resolutions. That way, when we fail to keep them, we have someone to laugh at us to make us feel even worse than we already did. And while they are laughing, they are secretly thinking about how glad they are that they didn’t tell you about resolutions they made and failed to keep.
There is little doubt that most resolutions would be good to make and even better to keep. I did make a resolution once, not on New Year’s Day, and perhaps many of you have made this resolution, as well. I have resolved to never make New Year’s resolutions. That has been a very easy resolution to keep.
Happy New Year.
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