New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year when news content is full of best of lists, retrospectives, predictions, and suggestions for New Year's resolutions. I guess I should be happy that there is a counterweight to headlines about bombings, disinformation campaigns, and the effects of climate change.  Even so, I find that these stories make me feel inadequate. I read 60 books this year but not a single one from the New York Times' 10 best books. Oppenheimer was the only one of the Times' 10 best movies that I saw and honestly, I didn't love it. And I only think I heard one song off of Rolling Stones' top 10 from the year but that's only because I saw the Barbie movie. (Full disclosure:  I don't even know who some of those artists are.)

When it comes to making New Year's resolutions, I am decidedly on the fence. NPR's Life Kit has helpfully provided a list of 50 (!) suggestions for things I could be doing to make my life better.  Thankfully, I can check some of these off my 2024 to do list:  e.g., get married, decide whether to have kids, and quit my job. There are some chestnuts here around diet and exercise, plus a few that don't appeal at all (get into birding). 

The experts say that writing things down or worse yet, posting them to social media, creates a stronger mechanism for accountability than just having an abstract goal in your head. That makes a certain kind of sense but in my experience, it's not the list writing that does the trick when it comes to creating new habits or using my time more fruitfully. I just need that switch to go off in my head. It's either going to happen or not, and I couldn't tell you why that switch sometimes goes off and sometimes, it remains stubbornly untouched.

One thing I will publicly commit to is to publish something here every Monday in 2024. I hope you'll come back and better yet, leave me a comment or invite a friend to read along as well.  Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year. 

Until next week......