Resolved not to resolve

joelmw posted a pic said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 2:47pm ET

Several years ago I resolved not to make any "New Year's Resolutions." It stuck. Best resolution ever.

Who's with me?

It's not that I'm opposed to change; it's just the whole bandwagon thing and the artificiality and abruptness of it. And the inevitable failure: people almost always set goals that they know they can't attain--and that, indeed, are broken with a simple slip.

I'm all for tilting at windmills even, but it's more an individual than a team sport. I enjoy actual team sports, but I find en masse togetherness in individual activities to be distracting and a little disturbing. I mean, it's cool if you're trying to do some sort of surreal performance art, but it works as art because it's otherwise wrong. IMO.

I'm thinking of a particular metaphor. This one time I'm not going to say the inappropriate thing.

6 comments, 4 replies
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lisaviolet said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 2:49pm ET:

I don't make resolutions either. I'm sixty-one years old, never made one that I stuck to in my first forty years. No guilt.

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moondrake said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 3:11pm ET:

I have often said the same thing, my NY Reso is to give them up (I also tell people who ask me what I gave up for Lent, "Christianity"). But this really will be a New Year for me, with retirement only a couple of weeks away. So I am going to make some changes to my lifestyle based on gaining control of my dayight hours. I am going to resolve to sleep better, eat better, spend more time outdoors, take some fitness and art classes, and get back to some of the art media I have put in hiatus for years due to lack of time. Sculpting, painting, drawing, stained glass. Maybe I'll even do some writing. But I am not pinning a timeline on anything except this one: each week at least one avalanche zone disguised as a closet will be cleaned out and organized till I get them all done.

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- @moondrake I like your Lent response. I've used "token deprivation" and "pointless ritual." Not that I think the deprivation and ritual are necessarily meaningless, but, yeah, I have issues.
  
  joelmw said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 3:17pm ET
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- @joelmw I've given up eating snacks at work (there's a lot of them).
  
  dashcloud said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 5:39pm ET
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parodymandotcom said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 3:15pm ET:

I resolve to blame the goat.

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nadroj said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 3:43pm ET:

I think it's good to plan and have goals, but there's something about New Year Resolutions that don't seem to work for a lot of people.

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- @nadroj 1/4 of people don't even make it a full week. I'm fully chalking that up to lack of motivation. http://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/
  
  Collin1000 said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 5:41pm ET
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- @nadroj @nadroj Maybe because so many of them are made while drunk?
  
  hallmike said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 5:49pm ET
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MrGlass said Tue, Dec 30th 2014 at 8:20pm ET:

I'd do this, but it would break my streak of 5 years without a new years resolution.

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Thumperchick said Wed, Dec 31st 2014 at 5:08pm ET:

I resolve to not make some over the top arbitrary resolution that I won't follow through on. I'll probably come up with something reasonable that I need a little nudge to get done.

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