Resolutions

// hi vs. low

By Jordan Childs .
01.10.10 // Resolutions

View Comments / Jan 10.10 / Resolutions / by Jordan Childs

// What Would Dick Clark Do?

By Julie Matheny .
01.09.10 // Resolutions

New Years resolutions are a funny thing.

I read an article the other day about how beginning-of-year promises are a farce. That they’re simply a big lie we tell ourselves as method of placation, a reassurance in the face of change. If this is the case, then why do we take the time to address seemingly random areas of improvement in our lives if most resolutions never make it past Martin Luther King Day?

The answer is simple: people love to-do lists. Or, rather, they love writing to-do lists. The act of naming our goal, of physically writing it out on a piece of paper, brings us closer to achieving it. After all, the first step in any ‘recovery’ program is admitting that you have a problem.

No one is a bigger list-writer than I am. My college notebook margins were filled with mini-lists, usually written during boring lectures or (worse) student presentations. Neat handwriting, proper grammar and punctuation. Cute little bullet points that line up perfectly. While the content has changed from “workout before tonight’s party” to “bang out 50 lines for SPAM,” the function remains the same: a sense of accomplishment.

The thing is, the author of that article is right. I don’t know about you, but to-do lists prevent me from actually doing anything.

I thought about this during break on a plane ride back from Boston (I’m pretty bored in transit), and by the time I touched down at Dulles I figured it out. So, instead of writing a list of New Years resolutions, I’ll just write about them.

The way I see it, there are two ways to turn a “should” list into a “will” list.
First, we have to get specific.
Kind of like in advertising.

Great ads follow you around like a pair of eyes in a painting. You feel as though the eyes are looking straight at you. So does the person standing next to you.
That’s why great advertising doesn’t speak to an individual. It speaks to a world full of them. In the realm of to-do lists, this means you have to speak your language. You have to buy into what you’re writing, because you are the client. And clients (so I’m told) respond to specifics.

Implicit in our goals, of course, has to be a means of achieving them. Which brings me to my second amendment to the list: The “how.” Writing “quit smoking” is a step, surely. But writing “join a program to quit smoking and if you deviate have friends beat you over the head with their peep-toe pumps until you cry sad, hiccupy tears and beg for mercy” is a leap.

If masochism isn’t your jam, just make sure you give yourself a couple more rungs on the ladder so you’re not stuck deciding which foot goes first. In short, have a plan of action. It might be hard for you to achieve your goals, but it’ll be easier when you delineate a plan, if only because it limits the number of viable excuses that’ll fly.

That’s the advice I’m giving myself. My resolution is to write more.

So I started a blog.

Happy New Year!
-juliek

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008.  There are a total of 7 posts, and I haven’t posted since July. Of 2008.

Last year around New Years, I gave a presentation for a Nicorette campaign that ended with a surprise declaration to quit smoking.  Within a week, I had begun again.

2010′s resolution? Stop publicly declaring New Years Resolutions.

Oops.

View Comments / Jan 09.10 / Resolutions / by Julie Matheny

// Randy and Everything After

By Charles Hodges .
01.09.10 // Resolutions

Resolutions.  They are all the same.  And they should be.  Because most of us don’t do the things we need to.  But why can’t we right our wrongs?  Why can’t we break the shackles that bind us?  This is usually where I would insert an answer. But I don’t have one.  I’m just as bad as you. No, not you, Baptist preacher/fitness instructor who speaks Portuguese.  We all know you are perfect.  Have fun conversing with the Brazilian cashier at the Gold’s Gym in Forth Worth, Texas.  Actually, Baptist preacher/fitness instructor who speaks Portuguese, we need to borrow your for a second.  Is that okay? Can you spare a moment before your pectoral sermon?  What’s that? Your name is Randy? Okay, Randy. Randy here is an example of what happens if you follow through with your resolutions.  What’s that you say Randy? In the late winter of 2003, you were a porn addicted atheist who was morbidly obese?  You talked shit to 8-year-olds while playing Halo, hated people with different accents and spent Sunday mornings at Golden Corral?  Interesting, Randy.

I sat down with Randy to talk to him about his metamorphosis.  I wanted to know how to break the shackles, how to change the unchangeable, how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly.  I wanted to see if Randy could teach me how to be a better person.  But he couldn’t.  Because here is the secret about people that come through with their resolutions: they don’t want other people to reach theirs.  It’s sad, but it’s true – like all of the sisters that are in the weight loss challenge, until one of them achieves their goal.

“Go ahead, Samantha, take a frozen snickers bar.  You look great.  You really do.  Have I told you about the new dog Albert and I saved from the pound?”

Not reaching our resolutions makes the world go round.

Think about it.  If everyone was able to stick to a budget, lose weight, speak Spanish, not watch porn and go to church, there would be very little for people to do.  If everyone made good on their January 1 promises, life would be pretty boring.  But fear not, for this is natural.  Mother Nature knows it.  That’s why we have things like Hurricanes, Tornadoes and the Jersey Shore.  Things can’t just maintain a sense of balance.  There must be an instigator.  The gym needs Ben and Jerry’s.  The government needs terrorists.  God needs Satan (because love without choice is not love at all).

And that’s what resolutions come down to: choices.  We make promises that we are going to change the things we choose.  What we buy.  What we watch.  Where we sleep.  So maybe, in the end, resolutions, broken or fulfilled, are just constant reminders of our own humanity.  Constant reminders that we have agency over our souls.  That, unlike the beasts, we have reason over instinct.  That, when we forgive ourselves for breaking our resolutions, we show we champion mercy as the ultimate display of power.  And, in the rare case that we fulfill them, we show that, yes, we choose hope over fear.

So, go on, promise yourself everything.  There is only one day of your life where you don’t have a tomorrow.

View Comments / Jan 09.10 / Resolutions / by Charles Hodges

// All the News

By Tristan Smith .
01.07.10 // Resolutions

The primate stepped out of its apartment down to the sidewalk.
Sniffing the air, he turned North and walked out of the Village.
He was still jet lagged from a few nights before, and the hollow slowness made it difficult to dodge the stacks of magazines and piles of dog shit that lined the street.

Resolved: I must begin reading more. Someone read all these magazines and I did not.

He continued on, breathing with difficulty in the fast moving air.

Resolved: I must move faster through life, if only to keep up with the warming planet. Warmer goes faster, at least the molecules.

The thought was so clever that it made him smile a little.

A Korean newspaper drifted across his path.
It had been a while, and the characters didn’t make quite as much sense as they used to, but he was able to catch it with his shoe and study a few columns.

“Scientists say chimpanzee sperm and human egg compatible.”

He removed his foot. The paper caught an updraft and lept towards the windows of an Italian restaurant.

It was not the fact that it could be done. It was the fact that if it could be done, then somewhere out there, at some point in time, it had already happened. A man-monkey, or perhaps more accurately, a monkey-man, had been conceived and maybe even brought to term. Maybe it was thrown in an incinerator. Maybe it lived chained in a cage. Maybe it still lived somewhere, teaching judo or sign language in a small town somewhere.

The fact that a man-monkey had existed somewhere opened up a whole host of new questions: what would the offspring of a human and a man-monkey, or a man-monkey and a monkey, look like? How much man was needed for sentience? Or, somehow more frighteningly, speech?

He continued walking.

Resolved: look into donating to a foundation that supports the creation of man-monkeys. Or one that’s against the creation of man-monkeys.

He hadn’t decided yet.

View Comments / Jan 07.10 / Resolutions / by Tristan Smith

// The Evolution of A Resolution

By Alex Aloise .
01.06.10 // Resolutions

View Comments / Jan 06.10 / Resolutions / by Alex Aloise

// Look Out

By Jake Dubs .
01.05.10 // Resolutions

I recently bought my first pack of cigarettes since moving to LA.

I’m no smoker.

This evening, I pulled one out, walked onto my deck, lit up and stared up at the night.

At first I could see the regulars– Orion’s belt, the Big Dipper, the North Star, Mars. But after a few moments, as I let my eyes adjust, one by one the lights went up around me.

By the seventh drag I was standing under a canopy of muddled white.

In this chaotic and oblivious start to 2010, when no one really knows what’s next, when the news rolls in at uncomfortable speeds and the lists of talking heads about what to expect in the coming decade light up the internet and we all become more engaged with our computer screens and mobile devices and less engaged with each other, sometimes going out and staring at the sky is the answer.

I’m by no means the first to write this, but the pitfalls of being young and inexperienced and starting out in a new career are trumped by the virtues of being pure, untouched, full of ambition, curiosity, wonder. Life hasn’t gotten the best of us yet. We’re not completely caught up in the bullshit yet.

We can still look into the stars and forget about the computers and the new media and the millions out there clamoring over each other to invent and cash in on the next big thing before the world has even taken hold of the things before it.

This year, once every week, I’m going to grab a cigarette (or maybe just an iPod), and I’m going to stare at stars.

That’s my resolution.

View Comments / Jan 05.10 / Resolutions / by Jake Dubs

// To be resolute is now to be wishy-washy.

By Ben Cheney .
01.04.10 // Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions have watered down what used to be a I’m gonna pound my fist on this table made of solid oak and I ain’t gonna take no lip from nobody type of word: Resolution.  In this context, “resolution” means, “a firm decision to do or not do something.”  The Declaration of Independence was a resolution.  Harrison Ford in The Fugitive was resolute.  Madge who decides she wants to shed 20 lbs. off her thighs, knees, and butt is not resolute.  New Year’s resolutions have weakened the definition of “resolution” to something that more resembles, “a decision to do or not do something most often dealing with weight loss, fitness, or attitude change that is charged at first by vigor that depletes heavily over the course of several weeks or months.”

Scientific fact: 90% of people never follow through with their New Year’s resolutions.  And if they do, it’s probably a fluke.  They forgot about the resolution, and it’s comes to fruition simply by happenstance.

Experiment: Ask the person closest to you what their New Year’s resolution was last year and if they were able to carry it through.  Nine people out of ten will stare at you with empty eyes, not even able to tell you what they resolved so vehemently over a bottle of sherry to do.  That other 10%, they’re probably the type who runs marathons, so they don’t count due to their supernatural gumption.

Revised scientific fact: 100% of people (not including those with supernatural gumption/those who run marathons) do not follow through with their New Year’s resolutions.

Who is to blame for this butchery of the English language?  Easy.  Dick Clark and his Rockin’ New Years Eve celebration.  He is responsible for all things New Years: hangovers, drug addictions, and illegitimate children.  And now, due to circumstances beyond the American population’s control, the blame is shifting to Ryan Seacrest.

But now is the time to resolve to reverse the negative effects of this.  We need to be resolute in our decision!  We need to get fired up!  We need to pound our fits on our desks and yell, “I will not let Ryan Seacrest foul up the English language!  I will not let him do that to my forefathers!”

View Comments / Jan 04.10 / Resolutions / by Ben Cheney