I love New Year’s resolutions.
Maybe it is the gleaming opportunity of a very fresh start that I find so attractive, or perhaps it is simply that I adore making lists. In any case, I never go into Jan. 1 without a set of resolutions.
My brother-in-law, a newly minted member of our family, does not do New Year’s resolutions. Apparently, his family “just never did them.”
I love New Year’s resolutions.
Maybe it is the gleaming opportunity of a very fresh start that I find so attractive, or perhaps it is simply that I adore making lists. In any case, I never go into Jan. 1 without a set of resolutions.
My brother-in-law, a newly minted member of our family, does not do New Year’s resolutions. Apparently, his family “just never did them.”
Naturally, I took this exciting and scandalizing reveal about my brother-in-law’s woefully inadequate New Year’s preparations as a platform to formally begin my own list, in the hopes that he will see what fun it is to recycle last year’s failures into shimmering hopes for next year’s future.
Some of my resolutions are goal oriented – like, “set a new personal record in your half marathon time,” or “read 20 books” – and others are what I like to call “general improvements.” This includes things like, “take out the trash more often” or “drink more water.”
For kicks and giggles, and because I really do love sharing New Year’s resolutions, I am going to publish my 2019 list right here.
If you want to share your own new years resolutions with us, go ahead and email them in and we will publish them in our letter to the editor section!
The official list
-Be on time. I am late to everything. I always have a good excuse, of course – I got lost, I lost my car keys, I got pulled over, I blew a tire, etc. – but I seem to have become that person that people expect to be late, and I find that distressing. In a world where one’s good name is their last and final asset, I would like to become a person who shows up on time.
-Read 20 books. I always include a booklist in my resolutions, but the number of titles changes every year, and every year I don’t actually read them all. But this year will be different. You can count on it.
-Drink more water. Coffee does not count as water.
-Figure out how to bake a flaky pie crust.
-Get regular haircuts. This could also be labled, “Go six months without chopping off my own hair with a pair of dull scissors in the bathroom after midnight because I can’t take the shagginess for one more minute.”
-Be more purposeful about staying in touch with people I care about.
-Stop changing from Drive to Reverse before bringing my car to a complete stop.
-Learn how to change a tire.
-Practice my accordion more often.
-Get better at rock climbing.
-Eat more green things.
-Stop leaving things till the last minute. Like this column.
-Pray more. Pray for my friends more. Pray for my country, for my family, for people driving on the roads and people living without homes and people struggling with school and work and debt and doubt, because if I truly believe that God is in control of all things, and that He asks us to bring our requests to him, then to not pray is to not put action to my faith.
-Find practical ways to address needs I see in my community and in this nation.
-Get to know my community better. It has been a joy getting to know East County, but it has made me realize that I do not know my own neighborhood very well, either. I want to be a better community member, a better neighbor and a better citizen this year.
