It's the second day of a brand new year, and I'm already beating myself up for not making any resolutions. In retrospect, I might be able to get off on a technicality, though, since I've been making the same resolutions day in and day out for the past umpteen years – and the only progress I have to show for it is an Olympic gold medal in negative self-talk.
My resolutions probably aren't all that different from yours. Lose weight? Check. To be fair, I have lost quite a lot of weight. But unlike most of the things I've lost in life, including my new winter coat – a recent loss that I'm quite bitter about as it was quite flattering and not all that inexpensive – I manage to find the lost weight every single time. I have an expensive digital scale; apps on my phone to track my food, map my walk, and let me exercise while in a budget hotel anywhere in the world; and "autoship" subscriptions for nutritional shakes, supplements, and healthy snacks. I belong to a gym that I occasionally frequent. I even have my very own personal trainer on the payroll. I'm almost six feet tall and I weigh just shy of 170 pounds, which is five pounds heavier than I was a year ago and about 20 pounds heavier than I was five years ago.
Another long-standing resolution is the vague be healthier. I mean, if the only options available were be more healthy or be less healthy, you'd obviously select be healthier. And you'd be really committed to that vision until you realized that you just signed up to eat less cake; lift heavy objects repeatedly for no real reason other than your health; and visit people like your evil dentist and your primary care physician for routine shaming. If you are anything like me – and in this case, I happen to be me - you might make some appointments that you'll no-show for, you might buy some leafy green vegetables that will eventually transform themselves into some kind of science experiment in your refrigerator, and you will buy some expensive new vitamins and supplements that will give you the world's most expensive, colorful, and odoriferous urine in the tri-state area.
The third constant on my list of resolutions is also fitness related, only this one is about financial fitness, and while I'm certainly not the millionaire next door or anything, I do suck less in this area than others. After being stuck in a stupid relationship for a stupidly long amount of time because of stupid spending decisions and a lot of even stupider debt, I dug myself out of a big credit card hole about nine years ago – and I have not carried a credit card balance since. I don't live outside my means (not really), my husband and I live in a modest home, and our cars are paid in full. I have a job (and sometimes more than one) that pays me really well, and yet I worry about money obsessively. I don't save enough, I have a Caribou Coffee habit that costs over $1200 a year . . . You get the idea. So while I would give myself a passing grade on my financial fitness resolution, I'm not sure that the C+ grade I've earned is really brag-worthy.
Beyond these constant three resolutions, I also have a list of "shoulds" that I carry around with me everywhere I go. (Side note: this is why I carry such a large bag.) An optimist might refer to these "shoulds" as intentions, but that person would be wrong. Because a realist (a.k.a, me) knows that these aren't true. Intentions are things that you actually mean to and believe you can do, not a list of things you probably won't do but will feel really crappy about having not done later. A random sampling of shoulds:
- Update the blog I shamelessly abandoned when I got "too busy" six months ago
- Eat a leafy green vegetable
- Do not drink wine
- Make plans to see old friends
- Walk the dog
- Do laundry
- Listen to my self-hypnosis apps (ironically, one is called "Do it Now!")
- Schedule an acupuncture appointment
- Do something about my eyebrows before they fuse together
- Renew my passport
- Volunteer
- Take my vitamins
- Get serious about my career
- See a financial planner
- Write a will
But I think I'd like 2015 to be different. I resolve that this will be the year I don't make resolutions. I won't "should" on myself every single day. Instead of a laundry list of resolutions, I'm setting a theme for 2015. My theme, shamelessly stolen from an unattributed quote (or at least, I'm not sure who to credit for it) is this:
I've got three choices in life – Give up, give in, or give it all you've got. Today, I'm giving up on resolutions, giving in on nothing, and giving the idea of a yearly theme all that I've got.
© 2015 Princess D
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