I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Well, not grandiose ones anyway. A simple scan of the gym in early January versus any other time of the year is the reason why. As the U2 song simply states, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.” If you want to quit something or start something, just do it. You don’t need the first page of your new cat calendar to tell you when. Any moment in time will do. Still, New Years Day does stimulate a personal inventory process in some, including me. Not always, but since I’m sitting here with coffee and keyboard, I’ll give it a go. “Continuous improvement” of my life is always in process, so what tweaks will I look to make, more or less, in 2011?
More: Writing. One blog post in December ties my record low from February 2005. Oh, and that’s back when I started the blog on February 28th, Megan’s 16th birthday.
Less: Chemicals/food additives. “Low fat” or “low-carb” or any other faux food concoction messes with the body’s natural metabolic processes. I’m rubbing myself with pure butter right now…
More: Face-time. More time in people’s faces is good for me and for you. Well, I mean it’s good for you to be in the faces of people that matter to you.
Less: Immersion in the US political process. The state of my country is extremely distressing to me and our broken political process doesn’t provide much hope for solutions. Last night as Joyce and I watched Hitchcock’s classic “North by Northwest,” I said there will never be another president on Mt. Rushmore because the opposition party of any potential candidate would not allow it. I’m sure I’ll be back. I care too much, so “I can’t quit you baby, but I got to put you down for a while.”
More: Work with my hands. There’s something very fulfilling about stepping back and seeing the tangible result of mental and physical effort. I’ll let you know how that feels when I finish the basement family room.
Less: Sports Talk-Radio. Really, what’s the point?
More: New music. My spectrum is too narrow. MVRadio has opened my ears to wonderful audible scents this weekend.
Less: Rumination. Be here now.
More: Caloric deficit creation. Two related, tangible goals are to 1.) successfully run the 2011 Falmouth Road Race; and 2.) not get a sunburn with white shading under my “moobs.”
Less: Time in bed. No, not that time. Reading or watching TV for 10 minutes and falling asleep at 9-ish, then re-awakening at 1 and lying awake till 3 or 4 isn’t working.
More: Travel. I’m reading a book with a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s musings on writing. About writers, he um, writes, “The more he learns from experience, the more truly he can imagine.” I hope to learn a great deal from Paris in the springtime, but also raise my awareness to learn from simply walking local streets.
Less: Procrastination. OK, maybe these are resolutions…
More: Discipline. I’ll need it to make these improvements in 2011.
Less: Being “connected.” I can probably be more productive with much of the above if I don’t update Facebook hourly…
What tweaks are you planning?
I like the ‘continuous improvement’ theme…for me I am focused on continuing my journey to great health, spend more time traveling to my family, be more active in the Arts, and purging the past out of storage units, drawers, closets, my brain and heart (not necessarily in that order).
Happy New Year, my friend.