Call them resolutions, call them promises, call them whatever you want, but this is the time of the year to set goals for the year. Below is my list which may help you generate your own. Or not.

Goal Number One: I want to stop being pissed off at things beyond my control. Every time I watch the news—which is daily—I end up spitting acid, screaming and my head spins around on my shoulders. Bankers getting bonuses for screwing us all over. Town hall meetings that turn into WWF matches. Rush Limbaugh. Blue states and red states. Yet, I do not want to bite when I am fed the anger chew toys. I want to drop the ball and concentrate on what I want in my life. Which is less bile, more fun. But when some idiot on TV is screaming and waving a sign that says “Keep Government Out of My Medicare!” I can’t help but want to smash them over the head with a reality stick.

Goal Number Two: Lose weight. This has been on my goal list for the past fifteen years. I call it a Legacy Goal. Have no idea if I’ll do anything about it, but it’s a nice thing to have on my list.

Goal Number Three: Ignoring irritating people. We are surrounded by many annoying people in our lives. The more self-aware you become, the more irritating people you notice. So this year, when some irritant walks up to me and says something stupid, I don’t want to be angry. I want to either ignore them or come up with a witty comeback other than “Shut up, Dad.”

Goal Number Four: Prioritize my To Do list. Maybe optimize my To Do list would be a better way of putting it. I fret over the yard, the house, my work, everything. I’m so afraid of not finishing the tasks on my list that now I feel like a failure at everything. When I’m writing, I’m failing at keeping the house up. When I’m cleaning the house, I’m failing at writing. So I’ve decided to write my books and wear a blindfold the rest of the time. I may trip over stuff, but if I can’t see the mess, I won’t care.

Goal Number Five: Work out more. This has also been on my goal list for the past fifteen years. Another Legacy Goal. Putting it on my list makes me feel less guilty about eating lots of chocolate and drinking beer and not working out. Hey, it’s on the list, isn’t it?

Goal Number Six: Seeing my friends more. Because I’ve got this stupid list of crap I never finish, I don’t schedule as much time with friends. Wait…I’m having an epiphany… I’m… writing a list… about letting go of my obsession with adhering to lists… there’s a lesson here somewhere… if I could only find it…

Goal Number Seven: I want to be okay with who I am and where I am now. Here’s who I want to be: mature, self-confident, rich, on the NY Times Best Seller list, svelte and buff. Here’s where I am: overly emotional, self-confident in writing only, super broke, my total book sales for the last two years is 534 and I’m chunky. But this is my best. I work hard, and for some reason, this is the best I can do. And I want to be okay with that. I want to be okay with me. Fat, wrinkly, beer-drinking, swearing-every-other-word me… Somehow that looks even worse in print. I just frightened myself. Maybe this is another one of those Legacy Goals…

Goal Number Eight: Completing planned art projects. I want to create this entire series of yard monsters. Using chicken wire and plaster, I want to build large (between four and six feet tall) strange colorful creatures and put them in my yard. I want them peering out from behind bushes or guarding the mailbox or lurking by the garage. I have many designs in mind and have already created smaller versions out of polymer clay. This also sounds even crazier in print. And I just added a goal to your list: Avoid moving next door to Janet.

Goal Number Nine: Stop worrying. Another Legacy Goal, but I get closer everyday. I’ve worked hard and I’ve let go of many things. I am no longer worried that I will get female-pattern baldness (at fifty, I can tell I dodged that bullet). I’m not worried about my parents moving next door to me (because they’re dug in like ticks at that retirement home). I’m not worried that my cat will die (because he’s already dead.) I don’t worry about Frank cheating on me (maybe I should). I don’t worry about passing classes (because I graduated in 1989). See? I’ve really come a long way.

Goal Number Ten: Stop making stupid Goals Lists. And enjoy my life. I don’t want to push myself so hard that I wake up dead one day and wonder where the hell my life went. I don’t want my tombstone to read: Died Trying To Finish Her To Do List. Or the converse, I don’t want the two people at my funeral saying, “Yeah, hadn’t seen her much in recent years. But I heard she finished everything on her list.” Somehow I don’t think there’s a special red velvet section of Heaven reserved for people who completed their To Do lists. I’m afraid instead of wings they’ll give me a Dunce Cap that reads: Lived Her Life By Lists and Forgot To Enjoy Herself.

I just hope my Legacy Goals don’t follow me into the next life.

©2010, Janet Periat

AUTHOR’s NOTE: Wrote this a couple years ago, think you’ll like it. Hugs for the New Year from me to all of you!

The first thing I was going to do this morning was go work out at the gym. Then I noticed the date. January 2. I quickly abandoned my plans. The second of January is the biggest gym day ever. This is the day when hundreds of thousands of people wake up and realize that they are fat. They realize that January 2 is the first official day of their New Year’s Resolution when they aren’t too hungover to do something about it. So they grab the phone book, look up the address for their local fitness club and head off towards their future of buff skinniness. Poor deluded fools.

I, for one, hate New Year’s and all the dumb resolutions that go along with it. I think it’s appropriate that we call them New Year’s Resolutions because they don’t last past New Year’s Day. All those tubby repenters will be at my gym today and today only. The very dedicated will be there until about January 15. That’s when most people forget about all their resolutions and go back to normal. It’s also when Krispy Kreme feels free to ramp up their production schedule.

I am hereby calling for the revoking of the New Year’s Resolution. Let’s abolish this sucker. Because it’s really the New Year’s Lie. All we’re doing is setting ourselves up for failure. When we’re at a party with a lampshade on our heads—making out with some guy who looks just like Antonio Banderas—it’s easy to make a bunch of fantastical plans. We promise ourselves that in the New Year we’ll lose weight, work out, quit smoking, drink less, see our parents more. Because in that moment, it’s not the next year. It’s the moment when you’re throwing caution to the wind. Your last hurrah before the cold light of January dawns. You’re shoving finger foods in your mouth, having a grand old time with Antonio, drinking magnums upon magnums of champagne, and in that moment, sure, losing weight sounds easy. Antonio might even stick around after New Year’s if you’re skinnier. Then comes January 1. You wake up and try to move your head, but it weighs a hundred pounds. You try to speak but your tongue feels like a huge wad of sandpaper. You try to move off the bed, but it’s spinning so fast you feel like you’re on a merry-go-round. Then you realize that you’re not alone. You vaguely remember sleeping with Antonio Banderas the night before. You finally manage to move your head to see if Tony is still there. You scream. Somehow during the night, Antonio transformed into Pauly Shore. On the way home, you remember your resolution. You also realize that you need to add “giving up champagne and New Year’s altogether” to your other resolutions. And then you kick yourself for making the stupid promise in the first place. Then on January 2nd, you wake up guilt-ridden and drag yourself to the gym with the secret hope that the real Antonio will leave Melanie for you if you lose that fat pad around your tummy.

I think what we need to do is get rid of the entire holiday season. It’s Christmas that prompts this whole resolution cycle of sinning and repenting. We pig out on Grandma’s fudge, Mom’s cookies and Dad’s turkey stuffing because we’re so stressed out about the holidays, food is our only source of pleasure. We consume massive amounts of alcohol to combat the urges to strangle nasty family members that we’re forced to visit. We spend money we don’t have buying stuff for people that they don’t need. Then for all our hard work, we reward ourselves by overindulging yet again on New Year’s Eve. Five, four, three, two, one—all the top buttons of our collective pants burst at once. And then, on January 2, we dutifully file to the gym and sign up for a whole year—when in actuality we’ll be done with this gym nonsense before the membership fees show up on our credit card bill. It’s amazing what effect tight clothes and a couple bottles of booze has on the human brain.

I have to say, however, that its very entertaining watching the unbridled enthusiasm of the fledgling gym attendees on their first (and usually last) day at the gym. They arrive in their new workout clothes feeling great about themselves. They already feel thinner because they’ve put on track pants which have elastic waistbands. Then with all this wonderful motivation, they set about their workout. They are so excited that they’ve finally forced themselves to a gym that they’re going to make up for an entire year of sitting on the couch and stuffing their faces with Big Macs. All at once. They attack all the new machines; the Pec Deck, the Thigh Killer, the Ab Murderer, the Butt Terminator. They sweat and grunt and by the end of their two-hour workout, they are feeling omnipotent. They walk out of the gym feeling invincible. They are the new Superpeople. The next morning the Superpeople wake up feeling like they overdosed on Kryptonite. First, they can’t get out of bed unassisted. They discover muscles they didn’t even know they had. And all of them hurt. None of them will be able to lift their arms high enough to grab their latte off the counter at Starbucks. Walking will be agony, sitting even worse. Finally, they give up moving entirely and settle in on the couch. Because they’re stuck on the couch, they have to order out for food. Because they started working out, they feel entitled to eating a bit more, so they order Domino’s special two-for-one deal on large pepperoni pizzas. And thus the cycle of sinning and repentance continues.

What we all seem to forget is that last year’s New Year is this year’s Old Year. We all made and promptly abandoned the same stupid resolutions last year. So, here’s my advice: Skip the gym. If you want to feel thinner, keep the workout clothes. Not only will you feel thin, you will present the image of someone athletic. And if you continue to gain weight, you won’t notice and neither will anyone else—track pants have become the new muu-muu. If you’re serious about losing weight and exercising, don’t wait until you’re drunk and desperate to make the decision. Drunk desperation is best left to more important decisions, like at which party you have the best chance of meeting Antonio Banderas.

©2006, Janet Periat