New Year's Resolution--Fail!

Well...it's over. I gave it a pretty good run, but by 6:22p.m. on Tuesday, January 3rd, all of my 2012 New Year's resolutions were history, kaput, finito, dead.

Okay, okay, I must confess .... I did it on purpose.

You see, for so many years, I have seen my resolutions come and go. I have either failed to write them down and simply forgotten what I set out to do, or I have given the resolutions the old college try, only to suffer a long drawn out year of disappointment and despair. This year, I decided to take control of the situation. If I was going to fail at my New Year's resolutions, I was going to do it on MY terms dagnabbit!

It all started at 4:34 Monday morning with my small but mighty alarm clock. If I was going to take control of my failure, this was the moment I would start. Instead of leaping from my bed and heading to the gym, I hit the snooze button, rolled back over to sleep, and awaited a paw to my face from Murphy to tell me that it was really time to get up. As resolutions go, going to the gym "every single day of the year" was kind of a non-starter, and I would like to blame a strong IPA beer called "Pliny the Elder" for even giving me that silly idea in the first place.

Approximately 87 minutes later I am at the local Peet's coffee getting my morning fix, when it occurs to me that it's time to bring down another resolution. "Cutting back on sugar in my coffee" seemed like a grand idea, but it aint gonna happen this year pal! I will take my medium coffee and my 7 sugars and I will enjoy it thank you very much!

Once back at the house, and getting ready for work, I decide that there is no better time than the present to NOT floss. This is a yearly resolution with me, an old friend if you will. To fail on this resolution just feels right. Like wearing an old pair of jeans. Or getting a huge dental bill.

I am now on the 405 North, heading to work in the carpool lane, when all of a sudden a red Camaro crosses over the yellow lines and gets right in front of me. This is truly a gift for me, because while I certainly was keen to break my "try and judge people less" resolution, I just didn't expect it to happen in such a wonderful fashion. So I take advantage of this and I judge the Camaro driver. I judge him hard. It takes me only about a quarter of a mile before I have completely created his life story, his friends, his fake tan and his hair piece.

Once at my job, I flip on the computer and find that since my boss has not yet arrived, I should just go ahead and jump on this next resolution fail. "Being more productive at work" is really just kind of pie in the sky thinking isn't it? Also, it's incredibly vague .... I mean, how do you measure that? So let's knock this one out right now and spend some quality time on The Huffington Post shall we?

The day of non-productivity goes quite well, as I am able to falter at a few more resolutions. I snack on mini chocolate bars throughout the day, ("cut down on sweets"), I have a splendid lunch at Wendy's, ("cut out fast food") and I even find time to cancel a guitar lesson that seems to have puzzled the good people at the music store, because, well, I never actually signed up for one yet.

I arrive home and find that it's time that I grab that "post commute beer" out of the fridge, which effectively guts my "no more post commute beers" resolution and I begin to watch some Tivo'd "Beavis and Butthead" episodes, which nicely eliminates my "watch intelligent television" pledge.

Finally I am ready for bed, so I curl up in my pajamas and start reading a fascinating novel on 17th century art, which I promptly quit. ("Start reading better books, and don't quit them.")

In just one day, I have successfully butchered every single new years resolution that I had created for myself. I find myself smiling as I close my eyes to sleep, because in killing all the petty resolutions, I know I am on the road to perhaps achieving success with the biggest resolution of them all: to be kind and forgiving to myself.

Happy 2012.