Resolution Evolution

This is how my New Years Resolutions have evolved over the years.

When I was a smug, anti-social schoolboy, I got particularly grumpy around the holidays. One thing I especially hated was how festive everyone would become right before Christmas Break. And afterward, New Years Resolutions were stupid things done by stupid people.

And that was that, even though I did New Years Resolutions myself. You know, don't let anyone see me pick my nose.... That sort of thing.

Fast forwarding...

I'm still a schoolboy, but not for much longer. I've found a niche, and some classmates (the kids in band, mostly) actually respect me for who I am. So I'm not anywhere near as grumpy as before, even though I still feel out-of-place. But now it's time that I figure out what I plan to do after school is over, just as I'm getting used to the place. But no one has bothered to tell me what all the choices are! And the one personality profile my Guidance Counselor gave me to do said I should go to college across the USA (Oregon, actually) to study Forestry. Actually if there had been a World Wide Web back then, I'd've wanted to help build it. But everyone else in our big family is a blue collar worker, and that bores the piss out of me. But that's the only choice I know. It may have been at this time that New Years Resolutions started to have Meaning.

If I could name One Event that first made me realize that Resolutions are important to me, it would be the auto collision. It messed up my back and gave me a nasty concussion, so that I could not remember what happened.

As I lay in the hospital, I thought about that missing chunk of memory. I thought about consciousness. And I thought about All Those Unanswered Questions, like "How does the brain work?" and "What happens after you die?" and "Why do people lose socks in their dryers?"

And I Resolved to Find Things Out. Now. I Resolved to never have another New Years Resolution. Only dimwits sit around on New Years Eve and start thinking about what needs improvement in their pathetic lives. But I am Different. I am Self-Aware, Desirous of Instant Self-Improvement -- nay, Perfection, and I am in Possession of a Nifty Bedside Urinal.

And that was the end of New Years Resolutions for me. For a long time.

But I broke that New Years Resolution, once I realized that my Life today is so different from the Life I had back when I considered myself perfect and no longer needed to make New Years Resolutions. And it got me thinking, wondering, actually, "How did I get here, with health, finances and bad spelling ready to spiral madly out-of-control any second, splitting infinitives along the way."

It's Time. Time again for New Years Resolutions.

And my Resolutions are this: I will attempt to maintain the good, simple habits of drinking plenty of water, exercising, taking vitamins, breathing, and blogging.