100 Pounds of Dynamite

In what is becoming a tradition, I spent Christmas with Jessica and the family in West Virgina. It was another great time, other than being sick before and during. I didn’t take any pictures this year so I’ll have to rely on the ones that Jessica has on facebook.

Highlights of this trip include:

• The, apparently recession-proof, pile of presents
• “I don’t even USE my iPod any more!!”
• “Cam, do you have any questions?” … “Yeah, when are you going to shut up already?”
• “Doink ‘im on the head”
• The Rand McNally Road Atlas and thong underwear
• The doggie door
• Losing scrabble by ONLY 50 points
• “Hey Aunt Sharon – I call this move the Figure Skater”

I don’t do New Years resolutions, here’s why.

1. Tying an action to an arbitrary start date is a bad idea. If you really want to change something, you should change it as fast as possible. If you pick an arbitrary date to start a change, you’re pretty well sunk as you’ve given yourself an excuse to put it off. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as soon as you recognize what you need to do.

2. Resolutions aren’t goals. I’ve heard a bunch of resolutions that sound something like this: “my resolution is to lose weight” or “my resolution is to read more”. The problem is that that doesn’t really mean anything. How much weight? How many, or which books? Resolutions like that aren’t goals, they’re just statements. If you really want to make something happen, you need be clear about what exactly you want to accomplish.

3. It’s not about the start, it’s about the end. If you have a goal (instead of just a resolution) you also need a deadline. Anyone can choose a date in the future to start something, but it’s hard to pick a date in the future when you’ll be done with it. This is the key problem with New Years resolutions. Unless you set a date for when you’ll accomplish your goal, you’ll slip easily. It doesn’t matter when you start, so long as you reach the end.

That being said, it’s also possible to ‘resolve’ that a certain year, say 2010 – 2011 will “the year of (whatever).” Maybe 2010 will be the year of getting organized, or losing weight or getting back to your art or whatever. But… that is just a focus area. It won’t mean anything if you don’t set goals within that focus area.