.jpg)
Halfway through February and i am already behind. Priorities, I suppose. Read, TV, place stupid games on facebook, look at pictures of people I don’t know on Facebook, go skating (ha!), play soccer, or write on blog. Guess I know where that is. On the bright side, I finally scored in my fourth soccer game, although my goalie scored as well - putting him up to 2 goals on the season and me at 1. (That's the league I am in up there in that photo, but not my team.)
I have my next post topic planned already, having to do with the Olympics and the luge athlete who died. I caught myself using a phrase I despise (and it wasn’t ‘It is what it is’ even though i despise that phrase as well and caught myself using that) and it got me thinking about it. Today, I will finish off what I mentioning in my first post of the year - new years resolutions.
Since it’s been about 6 weeks since the new year, I figure people who did make resolutions are either well on their way to keeping them or or have long broken them. By now, if they have still kept them, they likely will - it seems to me that most resolutions are broken in the first couple of weeks. There is a corollary plan that some people do, called “abstinence month” or something like that - kind of recognition that it is too hard to give up booze (or some other sin) for a whole year, and instead jut try to avoid it for January. I suppose it has it’s merits, although I don’t really see them - why deprive yourself of something that you enjoy for 1/12 of your life? If you want to cut back on something, fine - but why just for a month? It could be just to contrast the Christmas season - a time when people regularly over consume. And if that is the reason, then I suppose I can support it.
New Years Resolutions themselves - I don’t really like them. (Note, at this point, the break in format.) It is entirely an arbitrary point in time. Plus, because they are expected to be all year, most people have a real hard time keeping them. It is just setting yourself up for failure because people tend to make real lofty resolutions - “this year, I am going to lose 50 pounds” - without any real plan on how to do it. Any basic goal setting guide will tell you a goal has to be realistic and there has to be a plan; and new years resolutions don’t have that. A better resolution might be “By Dec 31 2010, I am going to lose 50 pounds and I am going to do that by starting an exercise plan and new diet which will allow me to lose 5 pounds a month. I will measure my results monthly and change my plan and goal as necessary. If I reach my monthly goal, I will reward myself with a new pair of shoes; and if I reach my yearly goal I will reward myself with a 3 day vacation to Jasper.”
But I don’t want to pick on the process. I dislike the expectation that people should make resolutions at the new year and that we feel it is okay to ask other people what they are. When I was younger, I used to make “resolutions” like “This year I am going to drink more” and somehow ended up not reaching those goals either. Then people would ask me about my resolutions and not be sure if I was serious or not.
And yet - whether I like them or not, we do them. Maybe not always in actual resolution form - but every year we look back at the year that was and evaluate it. I regularly send out updates at the end of the year, reflecting on my events. Companies put out annual reports with goals for the next year in them. Kids get report cards. All this is because we need to have a way to mark the passage of time - and to determine if it was good or bad. So maybe I don’t like the particular NYR itself, but I still do the equivalent in other ways. I set goals at work, in my personal life, I celebrate birthdays, and I help other people do the same.
So what’s my point? I suppose that this, like so many other things I have covered in this blog, are not black and white. Disliking something in one form but supporting it in a different form, I do it and I think it is ok.
I just heard the phrase “It is what it is” on TV. Sigh.
