There is definitely too much pressure on people to make meaningful New Year’s resolutions these days. And it’s always the same old stuff – massive, life-altering pledges guaranteed to consume your last drop of self-control: lose weight, spend less, save more, organize your home, stop (fill in the blank) drinking, smoking, driving in the carpool lane with an inflatable doll named “Greta.”
Now, while 2007 is in its infancy, I recommend that you carefully review your list of resolutions and consider making a few modifications because let’s face it: you are still in your post-Christmas pitifully weakened condition. Just look around you. The Christmas decorations are still only half put away, and the rest of them are looking as seedy and out of place as your Great Aunt Tabitha in a tutu.
Please don’t misunderstand me here. Making New Year’s resolutions breeds character, and I am all for making some healthy, life-improving changes because goodness knows the month of December pretty much lapsed into pandemonium there for awhile, forcing us to throw good judgment to the winds as we limped to the finish line on Dec. 25. But now we are all pretty much over the holiday season. Today we stand ready to mop up the banana daiquiri flotsam slopped all through the living room as partying revelers bonked into walls on New Year’s Eve. Heck – we may even find the power to toss the stale Christmas cookies that are now permanently congealed to the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer platter in the pantry. But let’s take it easy out there, folks.
If you think it’s going to be easy picking up the pieces of everyday life again this month as you simultaneously pile on approximately 347 New Year’s resolutions – well, let’s be honest here. We might be setting ourselves up for (gasp!) “failure” in striving to keep all of those thorny resolutions we concocted so hastily at year’s end. Instead of heading for the inevitable crash and burn, perhaps we might create a few realistic goals that we can actually accomplish, thereby building a good, solid foundation for future accomplishments.
New Year’s resolutions – literally defined as “ideas that sounded really great at midnight Dec. 31 when you hilariously drank gin out of your boss’s shoe and attached your pointy party hat to his wife’s ample bosom before passing out cold in the taco dip” – can actually be quite creative when you put a little effort into them.
I, for one, am resolving this year that I will not go on “Survivor” and eat live insects. And while I’m at it, I further resolve to never give “The Donald” an opportunity to tell me I’m fired. And Martha Stewart needn’t bother sending me an invitation to her “Extravaganza of Expensive Spring Decorating Gala” at her Connecticut estate because Resolution Number 11 on my list is a complete block on attending unpleasant functions thrown by “A List” celebrities. Finally, I resolve to get through the entire year without winning the Miss America pageant. And I am pretty confident when I promise that I will very likely manage the whole year without breaking a single one of these lofty missions.
Now perhaps you are thinking, “That is all well and good, but what about some resolutions that present a little more, er, “challenge” because – let’s be honest here – all these look to be pretty much no-brainers.”
To which I say, Hahahahaha – that is precisely my point. When 2007 approaches its end and you are despairing that it’s time again to devise another list of unrealistic resolutions, wouldn’t you rather sit back comfortably, fold your hands across your rapidly-expanding tummy (because you dumped that pesky “lose weight” resolution, remember) and say, “Yep – that was a bumper crop of New Year’s Resolutions – I kept every last one of ’em.”
But, OK, if you want to throw in a couple of more enterprising resolutions, I caution you to tackle a few easy ones before attempting the whole enchilada, so to speak. Specifically, say you would like to re-organize your entire house. You might, instead, consider “Home Organization-Lite” in 2007. Here’s how it works:
All right, so you haven’t cleaned out your closet since the Nixon years. It’s probably safe to say you won’t be wearing your go-go boots and micro-mini skirt anytime soon. Consider finding a new home for these treasured items by passing them along to your friend Freda’s hubby who has just joined a “Cross-Dressing is Fun” organization in San Francisco. Or think about tidying up the corners of the living room where the “Spider Web Art” has recently begun entrapping the cat because last summer the proportion of web-to-cat ratio changed exponentially in favor of the web. And rather than storing all that pretty Christmas glitter in the grooves of your hardwood floors until approximately Labor Day, haul out the big vacuum and have a go at it. You’ll find the results much more satisfying than if you sort of scoot about the living room dabbing your stockinged feet around the furniture, collecting dust bunnies as you go, with the sole purpose of stashing said bunnies under the area rug for a couple of months.
Besides, who knows what you might find under there? While lifting up that corner of the rug, you’re liable to stumble onto a couple of last year’s old resolutions.
Gale Hammond is a 23-year Morgan Hill resident. Reach her at
Ga*********@ao*.com
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