This is the best beginning after a terrible year I have ever experienced. I decided not to clutter up 2022 with New Year’s resolutions. Prior experience has finally knocked some sense into me. If I resolve to do something I am overthinking things. The key word here is resolve. That means I am planning to change my daily habits in a way that becomes impossible to meet.
All through the years, I operated on schedule made by others. I got used to completing tasks for other people and meeting my own very high standards so that no one was unaware of how I resisted even the silliest edict being handed down. I hated being told how I must do my job, raise my family, or change myself in any way really. Underneath my follow-the-rules exterior was a rebellious, opinionated soul. My close friends and family know this about me and I can’t say it is something of which I am proud.
My best laid plans of action for various changes never last more than a week or two. Oh, they appear to last as I continue exercising or eating healthy foods but I have never had a problem meeting my own goals. The difficulty with continuing making false resolutions is not only that they don’t work, but they produce a lot of stress and guilt. Unfortunately, some years my resolutions included those two words, which usually make most of us physically ill. I determined that if I lost weight, exercised differently, or ate less, I would be successful. This is just not true.
It is these tasks that I have taken on because someone else thinks I should that always fail. I delude myself into thinking these changes are good for me somehow, the people around me will see how hard I am trying and feel better about me. This false assumption is also not true. No one can say this is fake news for anyone, because this is my own personal fact. No one cares who is trying to make themselves better in any way, they are trying too hard to keep themselves in check. I am not the only one who learned long ago (in elementary school) to take my own appearance very seriously. I always tell my friends that I hated the viciousness of junior high girls, so that even now the overly sensitive, highly dramatic middle schooler remains at my core.
That is because the word resolution throws a kink in my completion of a task. It is too lofty. It brings to mind so many organizational meetings I have attended, where unable to make a resolution that would really have a positive effect, the governmental body decides to make a resolution of some sort. As a teller of fairy tales, I picture the parchment scroll unfurling as the appointed messenger barks out an edict from the royalty on parchment, “Hear, hear one and all.
Queen of my own kingdom, every year I announce my yearly resolutions solemnly to uncaring listeners, so most every year I then mentally toss it into the trash. I made no resolutions. I am simply moving forward and continuing my usual way of trying to make a difference. Happy 2022!
By DOLLY VISCARDI – Special to the Herald Times
