Resolution Solution

Inevitably, the start of a new year brings on all those thoughts about self-improvement. Some folks look forward to the feeling of a new beginning, others find resolutions debilitating, some have sworn them off for life. Me, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool list-maker, so I relish the idea of making resolutions each year. I make them (and take them) with a grain of salt, hoping each year to make good on them as best I can, knowing full well I will break some and also trusting I will not beat myself up for it. I approach resolutions with the same whimsical spirit I keep when I read my horoscope. For the most part, the resolutions - like the predictions - are there for entertainment purposes only. I approach them with reverence, interest... and a healthy dose of humor.

It is with this spirit that I continually resolve, every single year, to stop drinking so much Diet Coke. I fail this one every year, miserably. And yet with each fresh January, I write it on my list, almost scoffing as I do because I know I am doomed to disregard it. My dear friend Bonnie calls Diet Coke "the Nectar of the Gods", and I couldn't agree more. The two of us are dangerous with the stuff when we're together, a couple of addicts who can't be in the same room without using. We'll go for a walk around the block just to justify the need for a thirst-quenching beverage. "Diet Coke?" I'll say innocently. Her eyes will roll back into her head, and I'll know I have my cohort in carbonation. We'll sit on the sofa drinking together in silent reverence; in the can or on ice, there is absolutely nothing like it. But the resolution to kick my habit is there at the top of my list year after year, decade after decade. I'd like to think it keeps me to the one-soda-per-day limit I've imposed. But really, the one-a-day rule goes to hell when I'm face-to-face with a good pizza or a bowl of Cheetos. Hit me with the salt, and I can gulp down four cans without blinking.

I used to resolve every year to stop picking my fingers, something I've done since I was four years old. I was trained well by my thumb-bitin', skin-pickin' mother. She's worse than I am, God love her, and she sure made it look fun. Besides, I had alot of nervous evergy to burn off early on; Bio Dad gone AWOL, different home every few years, new father to integrate... I had to find an outlet for all that anxiety. Other addictive behaviors have been shed, but this one remains, and in 2010 for the first year ever, I wrote a different resolution: instead of promising not to pick, I promised I'd stop giving myself a hard time about it. I'm forty-one, for crying out loud. There are worse things. I've done this for thirty-seven years, and I've come to realize it actually doesn't bother me. The only time it's a drag is when, as my husband says, I "go amateur" and draw blood (he considers me such an expert at the art of finger-picking that he can't imagine I'd make such a rookie mistake). It's the only thing he ever says about it, by the way. Never once has he told me to stop, and never once has he (God forbid) yanked my hand out of my mouth (word to the wise,: if you are in my presence, you will never EVER do this, or you may get a couple of shredded fingers shoved up your nose). Yet another reason why I adore Stan. He utterly accepts me, rough cuticles and all.

Where new year's resolutions are concerned, I find them helpful because they serve as gentle reminders of what I'd like to do to become a better, more efficient human. It's a way of checking in with myself. How'm I doing? Where can I improve? I resolve to have more patience as a mother; it remains to be seen whether I will remember this when I'm on the phone and Addie starts in with his steady stream of "Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama", but it's there, and I've written it. It's in the world. I resolve to cook in more, and eat out less. This is a tough one for me... but if it cuts just three trips to Cheesecake Factory out of our annual expenses, it will have done its job. I resolve to stop dwelling on that which cannot be changed - events, past or present, which haunt me because I wasn't able to right them then, or I have no control over them now. HUGE. But with every passing year it gets easier, and I figure by the time I'm fifty, I'll have this one aced.

I think people tend to forget what a resolution is. To many, it's a duty people are supposed to execute at the beginning of every year, an annoyance, a curse even. But a resolution is a living, breathing thing; it cannot exist in a vacuum (Oh! Vacuuming! But I digress). The things that I consider to be my truest successes came with a great measure of resolve. I've looked inward all my life, but that is not enough. To understand oneself is not enough; my father taught me this. No, it took sheer resolve to transform the qualities in myself that were intolerable to me, for whatever reason. I've found that I have great strength in this area when I want to. And when I don't...

Pass the Diet Coke.