New Year's Resolutions

I used to say that I don't make New Year's Resolutions because they are doomed to failure. Well, for the most part they are. It seems like it's become a bit of a joke to those out there who make them too. They stand up, announce to their friends that they are making a New Year's Resolution and it is to, say, swim the Pacific.

That's a long swim.

But everyone knows you're not going to do it. How many NYR's actually get carried through?

I have a bunch of thoughts on this (handily written down):

1) If you don't want everyone to know you failed at keeping your resolution (this of course implies that you're serious about the resolution), wait until the END of the year to announce that you did it successfully (prividing you did). If you failed, there's no need to say anything and you save all the face in the world.

2) If you need a little bit of a push from others on a serious NYR, then find like-minded people with the same resoultion and make a little group to inspire and keep each other on track. Say you want to lose 30 pounds before the end of the year or maybe you want to fit into a particular pair of pants or a dress or something like that. Speak it to your friends, grab those pants/dress/article of clothing and take a picture of it and then give copies to your friends. You can all have little bulletin boards with the pictures on it and the names attached. Monica wants to fit into this dress and Melanie wants to fit into these pants.

You can then compete (with health in mind and keeping the ability to fit in that article of clothing forever, NOT just once) and hopefully by the end of the year, you'll be able to do it.

Careful not to make a ridiculous goal. Keep your goals attainable so you can (wait for it) attain them.

Also, when your friend falls off the wagon and doesn't want to do it anymore, that's when you need to reach out and lift them up. You guys are in this together and if it comes to it, you need to ride them all the way to Dec 31st because they'll feel better with the results than they will if they give up and just accept being a failure.

Failures after all, just stopped trying.

And of course I'm not talking just about losing weight here. I have a NYR to practice for at least a half hour EVERY day except for days where it obviously isn't in the cards. It's not like I'm going to go home just to play guitar when my wife is in the hospital having a baby.

A half hour may not seem like that much, but time is short in this life, like I said before, and it adds up.

I have NYR's this year. Usually I don't make them, but this year I made a FEW of them.

1) Practice for a half hour every day unless obviously not possible.

2) Write a blog for EVERY day of the year. The ability to throw blogs into the can with a scheduled release date and time will help me out even if I have deployments, or my wife's going to be giving birth, or I'm out of town, or something like that. It's an attainable goal and I plan to make it. Obviously this started the other day, not on the first, but hopefully this won't stop on Dec 31st so I'm sure you'll forgive me.

3) Lose weight. I have a shirt I want to wear and right now it's too small. I'm going to photograph myself squeezing into it for my own records and then take a picture in it every week after starting Weight Watchers to see the progress.

4) Keep the kitchen clean for the whole year. When I go to bed at night I want it to be clean and the coffee ready to go the next morning.

5) I don't want to throw away any food items because we did not cook them in time. It happens sometimes, you take chicken out to thaw for dinner but you're tired and you order out and put the chicken in the fridge. Then a few days go by and the chicken's no longer good. This isn't going to happen anymore. If I'm going to waste money it's going to be on stuff I want like guitars and pedals!

Those are my NYR's and I'm excited to see if they stick.