Resolute

It’s the week of the resolution. Everybody sucks in a breath of lifelong discontent and cinches up their resolve belt one more loop. Everybody does it, and everybody finds their resolution bursting apart at the seams of resolve. The book of unsubstantiated statistics says, “7 out of 10 people will fail their New Year’s resolutions within the first week.”

We can’t do it.

I don’t do it.

Why set myself up for failure? I mean, life is tough. If I climb on the resolution bandwagon, I’m just gonna fall off. What happens when I find something I really need to tie myself to?

“I know I promised never to drive while changing my underwear, but since I couldn’t stop biting my nails in 2013, I gave up. Let’s just be happy I don’t do both at the same time.”

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to better ourselves, but why wait for New Years? Why not follow Nike’s 364 day slogan:

“Chain the kids to a bench, we got shoes to make!”

No, their other slogan, “just do it.”

That’s right. Any day can be a resolution day. You don’t have to wait till January 1. Start being a better person now.  I won’t. I mean I can’t. If I’m a better person, people will freak out. I have an image to uphold, and I’m resolved to uphold it—24/7

It ain’t easy being Rob, but you can still be you, and you don’t need a New Year’s resolution to do it. You don’t need me either.Let’s not spread that information around though. We’ll keep that as our little secret, right here on my little blog.

I was glad to see that nobody gave up the RobBlog as a resolution (Thanks Dad!). I did see that one of the top resolutions in 2013 was cutting back on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg recommends against that. He’d rather you give up on Google. 

So would Microsoft. They have unresolved resolutions involving Google.

I don’t believe anyone should have resolutions that cut against other people. And maybe that’s why I don’t see a resolution against Facebook as productive. Most people have thrown away their lives and real world relationships to go online and create meme-length relationships with strangers. Some real world friends have even followed to retie lost bonds. Now you’re gonna give up all those relationships to do what: rekindle lost relationships with people who are now on Facebook?

Sounds lonely to me. That would drive me to drink. Giving up one addiction for another, that’s the best New Year’s resolution ever! Still, there is a nobility in the husband and wife who put down their smartphones to look across the table, gaze into each other’s eyes and ask, “Who are you?”

If you take any resolve from this blog, take away the grey fuzzy part that says that January 1 is nothing more than a line on a page. A line where we can say, “Here. Now.” Why wait? Let’s mark lines anytime we see something we need to change. There are 365 opportunities to mark up our calendars. Let’s blot the whole thing out with good starts and endless resolve, rather than waiting till week one and failing after one week of weak effort followed by 51 weeks of meh.