I Can’t. Can you?

 

I can’t do it!

I mean, really can’t. Never could.

Okay, maybe, when it was a school writing prompt, but never on my own.

It felt conjured, expected, fake for me.

 

How do I choose one thing for a whole year when I have no idea what the year will unfold?

Yep…. Resolutions!!

I understand the cultural experience of focus, meaning, goal setting, etc. It never hits me right on January first: maybe, holiday hangover/exhaustion/idealism, etc. Even, in my idyllic teens and twenties, I didn’t.

It felt forced, like cosmic pressure to start the “year-off-right”: a superstition to make the year prosperous or better. Even, Feng Shui, to bring harmony, balance, and goodness to the year ahead. I know, it’s not a trend because people have been “resoluting” for a long time, but it feels trendy; a “bandwagon” thing, which goodness knows, I avoid like the plague. I have resisted “jumping on” for a lifetime, so, guess there’s no sign I ever will.

If you are a resolution maker, by all means, continue. 

I am a goal-setter, but they happen along the way, when the time seems necessary or proper. I am a commit-er. I commit long-term, like, forever. So, if I set a goal, Katy-bar-the-door, only an act of God can undo it! Which, likely, inhibits said goal setting.

Maybe, it’s because “someone told me to”… we might be making progress.

Defiance, at heart?

“Only make promises you can keep”, “you never know what’s around the corner”, “don’t say something unless you mean it”, “don’t over-promise and under-deliver” are huge deterrents to the annual pledge/vow/promise. I can’t predict tomorrow, let alone 365 tomorrows. If I make it vague enough to cover lots of things, how meaningful is it. If I make it meaningful-specific, it’s easy to fail.

As we speak, I have a few goals unrealized from last year: seems every year starts this way. Like I said, I rarely quit on a goal or promise, so I rearrange the time-target and trudge ahead. Having goal/resolution overload seems so heavy and demanding. So, I choose to not add another to the list, and live under the delusion I have escaped something: the emotional load of fulfilling one more thing on the to-do list.

I’ve learned, NOT making a resolution gives me a beginning to the New Year more appealing than a sentence on a piece of paper or a promise to myself. It lets me start without the restraint of vowing something I, likely, can’t or won’t live up to (a whole year is a long time).

I move into the New Year with freedom from the expected.

I can plow, shovel, or skate my way into January, whatever I wish.

I bequeath you the same. 

(Apparently, I gave myself the power to “bequeath”! See, I didn’t know to make a resolution to “bequeath” things, nevertheless, it just happened. Never know what a New Year might bring.)

 

Unless, of course, your happiness is in the tradition practiced by many…

have it your way!

 

Maybe, I treasure spontaneity!?!

By the way… picking a “Word for the year”….. maybe… a future post … or maybe …. don’t get me started … One. Word. For. The. Whole. Year….. my love for words (plural) makes it impossible to choose. Remember those printed dictionaries in the library, when they published such things? Over 12 inches thick, filled with words, requiring their own wooden stand.

Choosing “one word” is way too hard for January 1st … stress, anxiety, horrible odds of choosing an appropriate one, let alone the perfect one .

Yeah, not for me, maybe one day, I’ll grow self-aware enough to handle this quandary/gamble.

For now, I just can’t do it! 

 

How about you? Share you thoughts in the comment section.

 

Resolute-Free,

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