Resolutions and Revolutions

I have such a bad history with resolutions that I'm considering making some very easy ones just so that I learn how it feels to be successful at them.

The first one I considered was: Breathe.

Okay, I resolve this year to breathe regularly and well.

EXCEPT.

I have such a bad history with resolutions that resolving to breathe seems an unnecessary tempting of fate.

Last year I think I made only one, and it was a fun one, and something I anticipated with great enthusiasm. I bought a Moleskine so that I could be one of the cool kids, like Hemingway and Picasso and Diane.
Mind you, I hate writing by hand because I hold the pen funny and my fingers and joints cramp and my writing is illegible, even to me. I am not someone who keeps diaries or any kind of written records much (except for BUSINESS RECORDS if anyone from the IRS is reading and gets any wild audit-ideas). So I have nothing to write IN a Moleskine.

But then I got this absolutely great idea! I decided I was going to use it for a book/movie journal. List every book I read, or listened to*, or movie I watched, for the entire year. Maybe with thoughts/comments. Maybe just a list.

I can't tell you how excited I was to have finally found something I might actually follow through on.

Well, you may think you know where this is going. And you would be wrong. Sort of.

It's not that I forgot to list stuff. It's not that I didn't bother.

It's that I got hired onto a writing project that swallowed up all of my time for weeks, and then those weeks were followed by minor-but-annoying illness, and then our trip to the UK --

I am thinking there was never a 3-month period in my entire life (well, since I was 6, anyway) where I didn't read a single book, or see a single movie. THIS is what making a resolution does to my life!

My Moleskine gathered dust. I'd started it proudly on Jan 1 with the notation that I was reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and when we went to the UK in March I was STILL READING IT.

I eventually started reading and watching movies again, but by then who the hell knows where the Moleskine is? (sigh)

You see why I was worried about the "I resolve to breathe" thing, right?

But somehow, I still feel the desire.

So I will ponder them. I will think of something. Hey, clearly failure doesn't deter me! There's something good in that, isn't there?

In the meantime I am making one resolution for today.

Today I resolve to fill one black trash bag with "stuff that needs to leave this house" and make it, um, leave the house.

Tune in tomorrow to see if a one-day resolution will defeat me, as well.



* Audible rocks. Tell 'em dallaspooks sent you.