New Year’s Resolutions, Revision 58

New Year’s Resolutions, Revision 58
Hear we go again making those yearly resolutions. Mostly it has been an exercise in futility and frustration over my life. I made New Year resolutions that couldn’t possibly be met or that really didn’t reflect what I wanted to do in the upcoming year.
Last year, I seriously thought about what I would like to accomplish in 2012. For the most part, I was successful. I wanted to lose 20 pounds and I lost 54. I wanted to visit my two best friends from college and we managed to get together in an extraordinary weekend.
Some things I didn’t accomplish. I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to or visit a new foreign country. My Spanish is not much better than this time last year.
The jury is still out on whether I am a better writer. I think I did pretty well on being a good family man. I am not sure if I slowed down at work, but I am working on things I enjoy more.
For this 58th version of my resolution list, I am going to have fewer, but more specific items. I am going to lose a few more pounds, but concentrate more on inches than weight. I have lost seven notches in my belt and would like to lose three more.
I am going to clean up the garage. I don’t mean I am going to re-arrange the junk so it looks neater; I am going to throw out the junk that for some reason I have never been able to part with. Does anyone need a couple of unused S’more baking machines?
I am going to go through my music. This is the 50th year that I have been playing the piano and organ. I am sure I have accumulated some music in every single one of those years. Of the thousands of pieces of music, I probably either don’t play 90% of them, or I have two dozen versions of the same song.
There might even be some eBay specials in those drawers since I have my Grandmother’s and Great-Grandmother’s collections of sheet music. Do you need an original piece of music from the top song in 1913?
I plan to have lunch with five people I don’t regularly get to visit with. You get to know someone so much better when you break bread together.
Finally, I will continue to try to be a good father, grandfather, son and husband. I will try to be a good friend and employer. As we all know, these are symbolic promises. It takes work to do these things well.
I hope that no matter what your own resolutions for this coming year, that 2013 brings you good health, peace and prosperity.
oOo
Dan Ponder can be reached at dan@ponderenterprises.net