My New Day’s Resolutions

I have never been in the habit of making “New Year’s resolutions” This is probably due to my fear of broken commitments and failure, which would be the inevitable results of any attempt to reform my life for an entire year. However, the dawn of a new year does seem a good time for some inventory-taking and reflection.

I know I am weak on both planning and follow-through in nearly every area of my life. When I set goals and make to-do lists, I tend to list all the things I would like to do or be, without regard to whether the dreamt-of accomplishments are likely to be accomplished by someone with my existing track record. I then make some small wrong decision that makes it impossible to complete the entire list. Since the tasks or goals on the list can no longer all be accomplished, I scrap the whole list as hopeless and spend my discretionary time on whatever activity seems pleasant at the time.

Since this is not a recipe for finishing my dissertation or accomplishing anything else worthwhile, I have decided to focus on creating realistic, attainable goals that I have a decent probability of reaching. If I do this for a while, perhaps I can gradually raise the bar and create some more ambitious goals that will actually get me somewhere.

So, last night I made some New Day’s Resolutions for today, January 2, 2012. (I skipped having New Day’s Resolutions for January 1…it was a holiday, after all!)

Here they are (not in priority or chronological order, just the order I thought of them):

1. Run
2. Visit Sassy (that’s the horse that isn’t trained very well due to my habit of having big dreams but no planning or follow-through)
3. Go to Tractor Supply and buy alfalfa pellets for above horse
4. Write on dissertation research for 1 hour, with no TV to distract me
5. Work on BSF homework (have had it for 3 weeks but just started it yesterday)
6. Go to Kohl’s to use Kohl’s cash (accumulated while goofing off instead of working on dissertation…I got paid to shop!)
7. Call doctor’s office to ask about why the surgeon’s and pharmacy’s math doesn’t match up, and ask if it’s bad that the fungicide makes my nose burn
8. Go to bed by 1:00 a.m.

I know this is not an especially ambitious list of resolutions, but I wanted to start the new year with some chance of success. I am glad to say that I have reached all of my New Day’s resolutions (well, except #8, but there’s still hope I can do it). By way of complete disclosure, I should mention that hubby Scott actually did #3 for me, not because I asked him, but because he’s a nice guy and just did it…it got done, though, so it counts! And I tried to do #7, but the doctor’s office was closed, so this will also have to be a New Day’s Resolution for tomorrow, assuming my introspective mood lasts until then.

I think I like attainable goals!! Now I’d better quit writing and post this quick, so that I can accomplish #8. If I don’t, then my attempt at planning will be a complete failure and I might as well give up on the dissertation, the running, the horse training, and everything else. 

Good night!! And good luck with those New Year's Resolutions! Have you accomplished them yet?