Monday Listicles–10 Resolutions I Will Never Keep

January 2, 2012–10 Resolutions I Will Never Keep

First, a confession. I have never made New Year’s Resolutions, at least to the best of my knowledge. I suppose it’s possible that there was some instance during my school years when it was assigned and so I put something together in order to satisfy the class requirements, but I’ve never tricked myself into thinking that the beginning of a new year would somehow spur me to do the things that I otherwise would not do.

In my current working life, things that are going to happen in January are actually planned in about June and then developed until January. This week, in fact, is our annual meeting in which the rest of the team will be let in on what I and my senior managers have been working on for the past six months. In my personal life, if something needs to get fixed, it either happens right then, or it doesn’t happen at all–there is such a sea of things that need attention that no other system will work.  

As a result, the following list of resolutions are the things that I would love to do more, but know I won’t. Maybe writing them down will push them further toward the front of my mind and create such a strong desire to do them that I will actually work them in somewhere. That would be awesome. Here goes:

10. I will get my hair cut more frequently. Waiting until I can feel it pinned beneath my head when I lay down to sleep makes for a much less fastidious Bruce than I imagine myself to be.

9. I will pay more attention to the landscape around the house. Freezes two years in a row took the wind out of my sails, but it’s time to get over it and to make it right.

8. I will wash the Jeep. It’s been a few years. If I wash it, maybe I can sell it as the only time it really gets used is when I go fishing.

7. I will go fishing more often. I only went three times this year. That’s pitiful.

6. I will make enough extra money to get my wife a cleaning lady. It needs to happen. My beautiful wife should not be cleaning the house–she should feel free to make her own list and to pursue it.

5.  I will be more patient with the things that I am not patient with. It’s a long list of things that cause me to lose my patience, a list that frustrates me because it really shouldn’t matter, but it does and I need to get over it. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

4. I will abandon all of my vices and become nearly perfect.

3. I will make absolutely zero errors in judgement, recall, grammar, arithmetic, etiquette and logical thinking. Forever.

2. I will discover the exact method by which to tell people the complete truth and to have them come away from it understanding 1) that my argument is sound and 2) that I have told them the complete truth because it is helpful to them, all the while with them feeling super good about it and embracing me as a truly excellent friend/coworker/boss.

1. I will find the way to spend time with my wife, and only my wife, and to talk about something other than children while doing things that adults do, like drinking alcoholic beverages or seeing movies with something other than “G” at the front or listening to a concert or play. (Of them all, this is really the only one that I hope comes true. And maybe the fishing.)