My plan wasn’t to NaNoWriMo this month—as in, I had no intention of posting every day of January. Even now, I won’t hit that goal since I didn’t begin on January first. But it is bitter cold outside and on days I don’t sub or have a paying gig of any kind it is nice to get some words in.
Except for picking up the mandolin last year, I rarely begin with new year’s resolutions in earnest.
For starters, I’m usually at my healthiest and lowest weight at this time of year. Go figure (pun intended), when a body wears the most clothes, I’m at my fittest. It’s probably because I’m at the uttermost a very practical person. If my jeans don’t fit in the fall, I’d better start eating less or exercising more so they do fit.
Plus, Joe has begun a steady diet of oatmeal mid-morning, and we are co-at-home-workers, washing one another’s dishes and noticing the the other’s subtle lifestyle changes. What I’m trying to say is Joe has lost many pounds (spurred on by a terrible episode of gout in November) and so my mid afternoon cake and tea habit mostly died in favor of a bowl of oats and dried cherries. I believe in solidarity on a superficial level…At least I won’t eat cake in front of his face.
New year resolutions are less popular than ever, I notice. I think it has everything to do with the “woke” culture of today—like, if you decide your gender is fluid, how impressive is it to resolve you’ll try harder/be better/improve anything? If you can wake up one morning and decide you will make up a new identity, the weirder the better—who really cares about training to run a marathon or learning a new language starting January 1?
Except for the evil that is insinuated by the current sexual revolution and its Marxist bedmate, destruction of the family— I appreciate the open-mindedness that comes with leaning into the person you are meant to be. It doesn’t belong to just weirdos and socially deviant folks on the fringe. It belongs to the healthy who have a painful go with gout and determine to never let it happen again. Do the thing you ought to do, or dream of doing; do it now.
If you were hoping last year we were at the tail end of a pandemic, you’d be severely disappointed in this baby year and its consistently terrible news reports. I guess that’s why I’ve never been impressed with resolutions either—I refuse to be disappointed with life. It is what it is, and if I get a wild hair and decide to subscribe to a fruit of the month, I’ll do it beginning any dang month I choose.
Your ultimatums and mandates and psychological trickery can’t touch a person who doesn’t believe in new year resolutions.
(Now I’m off to doubt whether I should’ve posted this one over on the Average Pearl. Does philosophy belong on Honey Creek? Let’s begin something new again.)
onhoneycreek.com 