New Year’s resolutions — Revision No. 58
Published 2:01 pm Monday, December 31, 2012
Here we go again, making those yearly resolutions. Mostly it has been an exercise in futility and frustration over my life. I made New Year resolutions that couldn’t possibly be met, or that really didn’t reflect what I wanted to do in the upcoming year.
Last year, I seriously thought about what I would like to accomplish in 2012. For the most part, I was successful. I wanted to lose 20 pounds and I lost 54. I wanted to visit my two best friends from college and we managed to get together in an extraordinary weekend.
Some things I didn’t accomplish. I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to, or visit a new foreign country. My Spanish is not much better than this time last year.
The jury is still out on whether I am a better writer. I think I did pretty well on being a good family man. I am not sure if I slowed down at work, but I am working on things I enjoy more.
For this 58th version of my resolution list, I am going to have fewer, but more specific items. I am going to lose a few more pounds, but concentrate more on inches than weight. I have lost seven notches in my belt and would like to lose three more.
I am going to clean up the garage. I don’t mean I am going to re-arrange the junk so it looks neater; I am going to throw out the junk that for some reason I have never been able to part with. Does anyone need a couple of unused S’more baking machines?
I am going to go through my music. This is the 50th year that I have been playing the piano and organ. I am sure I have accumulated some music in every single one of those years. Of the thousands of pieces of music, I probably either don’t play 90 percent of them, or I have two dozen versions of the same song.
There might even be some eBay specials in those drawers since I have my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s collections of sheet music. Do you need an original piece of music from the top song in 1913?
I plan to have lunch with five people I don’t regularly get to visit with. You get to know someone so much better when you break bread together.
Finally, I will continue to try to be a good father, grandfather, son and husband. I will try to be a good friend and employer. As we all know, these are symbolic promises. It takes work to do these things well.
I hope that no matter what your own resolutions for this coming year, that 2013 brings you good health, peace and prosperity.