Keep on keepin' on

Grant County Journal
January 3, 2011
Keep on keepin’ on
Written by Janet Warren
So what’s the big deal about ringing in a new year? As Mark Twain said: “Now is the accepted time to make your regular good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” Ah, Mark Twain…gotta love him.
I always make New Year’s resolutions. And I always break New Year’s resolutions, so I suppose I should be as cynical about them as Mark Twain. There were a few years I wondered why I bothered making resolutions when I knew I’d most likely break them. My goals weren’t too different than everybody else’s. The top ten resolutions in the United States are:
1. Spend more time with family and friends.
2. Fit in fitness.
3. Tame the bulge.
4. Quit smoking.
5. Enjoy life more.
6. Quit drinking.
7. Get out of debt.
8. Learn something new.
9. Help others.
10. Get organized.
Since I’m not a smoker or drinker, #4 and #6 have never been on my resolution list, but all the others have. Over the years I’ve found that every one of the resolutions listed is a recipe for failure because they aren’t specific enough. Any time I began a diet on New Year’s Day, it was broken by New Year’s Night. I might be really good about following a budget for a couple of months, but then I’d make an impulse purchase. Once I broke my resolution, I’d say, “Oh well, yet another resolution bites the dust.” It was discouraging until one year I made a discovery. I had to use writer’s tools to rewrite my resolution list. That meant picking it apart, bit by bit, and looking at what I expected from life in a new way in order to figure out how to get what and where I wanted. It meant being kinder and more realistic with myself. Here’s the resolution I made years ago that has made all the difference in my life. When I break any of my New Year’s resolutions, I begin again the next day. It’s not all or nothing for me anymore. The difference now is that what begins on January 1st as a resolution, becomes a long-term goal the day I start again. I have to keep trying because it’s when we stop trying that we begin a downward decline. We never stay the same.
A close friend of mine stopped smoking when she found out she was pregnant. The day she stopped nursing her baby was the day she began smoking again. As a non-smoker, I found that so puzzling. Why would anyone go back to it when they had been off it for over a year? Now I look at it in a different way. I see the year she was not a smoker and all the good that it did her and her baby. Two subsequent efforts to quit gave her another eight months of not smoking. Her baby is now twelve years old, and because of her last effort, she is going on two years of being a non-smoker. I could not be more proud of her. I don’t look at her attempts to stop smoking as failures, but as victories, regardless of how long they lasted.
I have a love/hate relationship with Diet Coke. I have tried many times to stop drinking it, but my attempts don’t last long. Anybody who has ever withdrawn from a caffeine addiction can tell you about the headache. Since I only drink caffeine cold, Diet Coke and oatmeal is my breakfast of champions. It’s a vicious cycle: When I go without caffeine in the afternoon, I crash, but if I drink Diet Coke past 1 p.m., I can’t sleep at night. On Thanksgiving while we were in Arizona, I mentioned to three of my children that I was going to go off it again for my New Year’s Resolution #1. Immediately, both of my sons said, “Mom, you are never going to stop drinking Diet Coke.” Ah, fellas …really? Them are fightin’ words. I started the withdrawal process as soon as I got home, and I have been Diet Coke-free for three weeks. One of my sons bet me $100 I couldn’t stay off it for the entire year. I’ll expect payment in 2012, buddy, and I want cash.
As Ellen Goodman said, “We spend January walking through our lives room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.”
This year I am going to start writing my book. Now that’s something that has never made my top ten resolution list. I’ve always wanted to write a book. I have an idea and encouragement from two of my writing professors, but there has always been a missing element. Discipline. Writing is hard work and the easier writing is to read, the harder the writer worked to make that happen. Take Theodor Geisel. You probably remember him as Dr. Seuss. He locked himself in his tower at his home and worked at writing at least eight hours a day. So my resolution this year is not to write the Great American Novel, but to show up at the computer every day to write. As John Updike said, "Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour say--or more--a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day. . . .”
I have a few resolutions on my list to patch up some cracks, too. Sorry, Mr. Twain, but I have to go with Benjamin Franklin on this one: “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better [wo]man.”