Resolution Revolution

This time of year (meaning the time between Christmas and New Year's Day) my mind turns to resolutions. I'm often energized by this, thinking how resolving and then keeping the resolutions faithfully can make positive changes for me. Other times I think about resolutions past, kept briefly and flung aside. The truth is that I prefer to do things when I'm good and ready or not at all.

So I wrote the paragraph above and then drifted off into old journals looking at old resolution lists and comments about same. I'm none the wiser on the matter, but I have wasted an hour. Well, maybe I stopped to read some other people's journals. Anyway.

I've made lots of resolutions in the past although last year I bailed and said that the year was going to make its own demands for downsizing, organizing, moving. And it did. The year before I recycled resolutions past. Just like stars sometimes coincidentally line up, sometimes you make a resolution and voilà success is thine. I point to the last day of 2002. I weighed 177 pounds. (I recorded my weight at the bottom of my journal then so as not to attract notice but make a record for myself.) I was off of my peak weight by about five pounds since I'd retired a few months before. Topping a long list of resolutions was this: "Lose five pounds. [This is an easy goal, it would seem. The spam says '32 pounds in three weeks' or '12.5 pounds in three days' but, no, my goal is to lose five more pounds and stay there.]" On May 21 of 2003, I reported "I'm at about 165. So I continue to hear lower weights from the scale. Ever so slowly. Maybe I can at least keep off these fifteen pounds I've lost over the last eight months. More importantly I'm feeling better and my joints are feeling much better." After I wrote that, I continued to lose weight then bounced up some and settled in to a weight just below 165 where I remain today. But it was a miracle. I'd resolved to lose five pounds, exercise and eat more healthily time and again. The resolving didn't have anything to do with it. Rather it was a confluence of a real desire to exercise and the time to do it.

Yes, I've made many resolutions. From drinking more water to standbys like writing, organizing, cleaning. From the puzzling (learn to play Bridge, ride the bus and write about it) to the altruistic (find an appropriate volunteer activity) to the boring (learn more about photography, read more books, learn Windows programming). But what good have they done me? Not much.

So, I think I'll take a different approach this year. I'm still formulating it, but it's going to take the form of a general commitment and a protean list. More tomorrow.

[I'll not be making a resolution about doing more shop window pictures nor doing more to make them an 'art.' They take care of themselves, don't they? Today's was taken in the shopping center with Alamo South at a place called, I think, Let's Dish. They have great windows. We walked down there to see a movie. "Slumdog Millionaire" to be exact. I'll do a movie review entry before Holidailies is over. Really.]