Musings on New Year’s Resolutions: or What May Never Quite Happen

I am an incurable list maker. I started making them decades ago and they not only helped keep my life organized but there was also a great sense of accomplishment as I checked off each completed item. (Hmm, perhaps that could mean I was a control freak, but I much prefer saying I had great organizational skills!) Anyhow, lists have always been a part of my life.

Whenever New Year's Day approached, the “to-do” list changed and became a “Resolutions for the Upcoming Year” list. It was filled annually with lofty goals—everything from overcoming bad habits, improving my knowledge, trying to “live in the moment” and to become a better person in temperament and in listening skills.

Alas, so many of said objectives simply set me up for failure from day one!

For example—“lose weight”. Now, as a chocolate lover, how realistic was that one when there were so many goodies left over from the Holidays, and then Valentine's Day and Easter were soon approaching. Truth was, I let that goal slide until after Halloween every year but then the Holidays arrived again. Talk about a vicious cycle!… “Stop smoking” is another example of good intentions gone south—it took me fifty-seven years to overcome that habit!….Probably my favorite example of things that never happened was “Exercise Regularly.” (I did a whole blog earlier on that!) Suffice to say, at this point in my life, it “aint gonna happen” and I no longer list it as a goal.

Some resolutions did meet expectations over the years and more importantly, I learned to be kinder to myself in setting more realistic ones.

So let’s take a peek at my Resolutions for 2023. The list is rather short—partly because I have become a contented old lady and just want to enjoy my remaining years. First on my list is to go back to Boston, one of my favorite cities, and indulge myself in an old world, plush comfort hotel and spend time visiting a few of the superb museums that are located there. The city is pretty accessible by train and my travel arrangements and hotel reservations have been made for April. Now the trick of course, is to stay healthy but I am highly confident I will get there! Confidence rating that I will attain the goal: five stars

Second on my list, is to “Hydrate more.” Now, just to set the record straight, I do not mean that I am going to increase my wine consumption—that is currently quite adequate! It means, drinking more water which has never been palatable to me. The month of January is half over and I confess I have not yet tackled that objective. Yet hope remains eternal that I will start “soon.” As Scarlett O’Hara so aptly said in Gone With The Wind: “tomorrow is another day!”

Confidence level of meeting goal: three stars

Third on the list—Lose at least five pounds. Reason for that is that I have lost inches in height the past few years. I should probably lose those pounds to maintain a good BMI. Hate to sound like a broken record, but I haven’t yet made any attempts to bring it about but there’s ten and a half months left of this year! The good news, I have not gained weight. I’ll give this one a future success rate of four stars.

Resolution Four: Increase my Will Power! I do not understand how someone like me who can be very “willful” has so little willpower over the power that chocolate or even worse, coffee-flavored Gelato with pieces of dark chocolate imbedded in it, has over me! The container of Gelato I regularly purchased states it “serves five.” Really??? Not in my abode! The only solution I have found to date is to not buy it anymore and boy, do I miss it! However, that is rather drastic and I think with just a little more will power, I could purchase it again and learn to make it last for a goal of maybe four servings per container and limit the number of containers to two a month. This of course may run contrary to achieving the above goal of losing five pounds, so I may have to re-evaluate this. (I have gotten better regarding my overall chocolate candy intake but that is solely because my GI tract rebels.) Rating of anticipated success: realistically, it would be a miracle but being an optimist I will give it two stars.

I don’t know how many people actually succeed with their resolutions but I am a realist about myself. I’ll let you know next January ( see—that’s the optimist talking) on how things turned out. Wish me luck. In return, I wish you all a healthy and fulfilling new year.