It’s almost become cliche to make new years resolutions. The gyms are going to be packed with people sweating to take off those pounds produced by years and years and years of saying they are going to the gym but choosing to watch P90X informercials instead.
I give those people three weeks.
Working out is hard.
Most people forget that little nugget and think they are going to be able shed 365 days of not working out in one two-hour high-impact cardio or crossfit session.
In reality all they end up shedding is the meal from the night before or that morning’s protein shake (also a New Year’s Resolution).
I can hear the heaves and gasps from my desk. Yeah, that’s not my resolution. Not at all. Been there.
Done that. Threw away the Slim-Fast shakes after three months.
Mark Twain summed up resolutions in this statement: “Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”
My resolutions this year are few but profound. To me they are profound.
The first one is to be healthy(ier).
I do plan on exercising and losing weight but I realize I’m never going to have the body I had when I was in high school and I praise the folks that do. But that body, all 187 pounds of bleach-blonde awesomness, I earned by playing three sports, training in between and laying sod in the summer and existing on a diet of pork fried rice, footlong Subs, barbecue chicken and Creatine Muscle Builder.
I don’t want that body. I don’t lead a lifestyle condusive to maintaining that body.
I just want to get to the point when I suck in my gut, it looks like I don’t still have a gut.
That’s my goal.
I don’t know how many pounds that is to lose or anything.
And I’m also going to start seeing a chiropractor because apparently I carry around a lot of stress and I think I’m shrinking under the weight of it.
I figure they know good ways to torque, twist and align things to a point where I can stand tall (as tall as a 5-foot-10 person can stand) again.
My second resolution is to be wealthy. I will never see monetary wealth. I’m a journalist.
The only time we truly see great financial gain is if we die doing something incredibly brave (or stupid) and a book or movie is made of our lives or if we manage to have a rich uncle die (checking the family tree on that one).
The wealth I’m talking about comes from experiencing a rich life.
In my 33 years, I’ve traveled throughout the country, to beautiful Ireland (once) and to the unwashed masses of Disney World (multiple times). I’ve eaten many great meals and had many great pints in between.
I’m not saying all that to brag. I want to continue to expand my riches and make new friends and experience new things. Monday night, I had the car loaded down with tp bound for Auburn to help roll Toomer’s. I want to be able to reconnect with friends that I haven’t seen in a while.
And lastly, I resolve to be wise.
There’s an old adage that says “you learn something new every day.”
That pretty much sums up the way 2013 ended with me stepping into this job and into this town. But I want to continue to learn and to continue to grow as a person. People are not built to be static. I don’t want to be static.
I don’t want to be the same person a year from now that I am today. If I hold fast to these three resolutions, and follow whatever tangents abound as a result of them, then I have no choice but to grow and mature and evolve.
If you’re not moving forward you’re moving backward.
It’s that simple.