Resolutions.

Nothing to do with New Year's resolutions, but man is she a cutie pie:

It's sort of like Lent for everyone, this whole New Year's resolutions thing, especially when you compare it, overall, to both Mardi Gras and Lent. Whooping it up for a day, or in the case of everyone in New Orleans during that time, a full week or more. Binging on food, booze, and exposed boobies, it all ends on Ash Wednesday with the Catholics, crawling out of bed with bleary eyes, green faces, and dizzy steps, to go sit in church and feel bad about everything they've done and then promise to swear off some bad habit for forty days.

In the case of New Year's Day though, it's binging on food, booze and in the case of that one relative we all seem to have, exposed boobies for an entire holiday season. Regardless of religion or culture, there was some reason you ate too much, drank too much, stayed up too late partying or arguing with family, and then some other reason you did it about six additional times with seemingly no recollection of the 3524674897 calories you consumed at the last function.

Then here comes New Year's Day with her resolutions.What are you going to do better this year? Or in the case of acquiring a new gym membership as a resolution, what are you going to do better for the next three weeks before you say fuck it and cut up the gym card like a maxed out credit card?

All that sarcasm aside, there is something really refreshing about the start of a new year. While it's not necessary, not a requirement that January first be the starting point for a new outlook, a new mindset, a new goal, it still functions as a sort of reboot. Shut down on December 31st (usually after that third glass of champagne), reboot on January the first, and set off down the new road you've chosen for yourself.

It makes sense too, since January is named after the mythical Roman king Janus, who had two faces, one to look to the future and another, on the back of his head, to reflect upon the past. So while we forge ahead on   new path, we do so keeping in our minds the unfoldings of the previous path we were on, the past year and what it meant for us. What will we keep? What will we discard? How shall we improve upon ourselves while still being true to ourselves?

For me, that means to keep working out on this triathlon training schedule. I have officially registered for the triathlon so there's no going back now! And after that event, a resolution I have is to keep challenging myself physically. My friend Gneiss told me once that she's come to the conclusion that she'll have to work out the rest of her life so she might as well find new challenges to keep it both, well, challenging, but also interesting. So I am totally stealing that idea from her and after the triathlon, I'm going to find something else to do.

I also want to learn another language. For some psychotic reason I have it in my head that I want to learn Mandarin Chinese. I guess I can blame reading American Shaolin or maybe even the characters in the TV series and movie "Firefly" and "Serenity" or maybe I can blame the sheer difficulty of the language. If it's that hard, maybe I'll never do it? I don't know. I could at least work on bettering my French. But that seems so easy.

Another one I'd like to attempt is learning more about photography. I have zero skill and zero money though, so while taking a class would be beneficial to the skill deficit, I'm not sure I can afford a camera that would make such knowledge worthwhile. But I'm going to definitely research it, and try to hunt down a good deal.

Additionally, I want to stop being a procrastinating asshole and just finish editing my story so I can find an agent and/or start mailing it out to publishers so I can get rejected 38547 times. You know, I started writing this story before I got married. I got married in 2007. Enough is enough. I need to finish it.

Lastly, and perhaps this is the real resolution here: I'm going to stop bitching about how I have no time. I'm going to stop feeling so self righteous for dedicating so much time and effort to working out while letting my other interests fall to the wayside. Yes, I'm busy. But hell, everyone is busy. And as the saying goes, if you want something done, ask a busy man. Busy people get shit done, and while I think I get a lot done, that's not saying I can't get even more done.

I just need to prioritize my time better. When I got Thursdays permanently off from work, the goal was to write while Alex had her nap. Wednesdays, my original day off, was for housework and errands, so Thursdays would be for me. Except now she naps during all those BBC shows I like on PBS like Lark Rise to Candleford, Ballykissangel and Monarch on the Glen. So I'm going to have to figure something out if I want to work out, have basic conversations with Todd in Mandarin, be a famous author and take captivating photos of Alexandra.

Good luck to you all on your resolutions. Let us all be like Janus, looking forward, but being mindful of the past. For me, that means getting busier, perhaps, but also remembering that I can always watch those BBC shows online.