Resolve This

Today's ten minutes shall deal with the concept of the New Year's Resolution. I have chosen today to do this because I am at this point just over two successful months into the execution of my own said resolution, which we'll get to in a minute.

It is not particularly insightful of me to point out that the whole industry of the New Year's Resolution is extremely problematic, but it is still true. As we all know, such promises tend to be impossibly far-reaching (I will lose sixty pounds) or vague to the point of being meaningless (I will be a better person). I can't honestly recall if I have ever made any NYRs in the past, so I can't accurately judge my own performance in this venue. Mostly, I've avoided them for the aforementioned reasons, as I am a person whose expansive imagination will, if left uncheck, wander directly towards far-reaching and vague visions of personal change. For instance, if I confront my Sophomore In College self and poke him through the fog of time until he relents and makes a NYR, he would probably say that he'd try to watch less television. Any resolution that begins with "try" is a waste of time, and any fuzzy promise to cut back on TV is doomed for failure.

In any event, this year, I stepped up to the plate and made a Resolution. Actually, it should probably be referred to as a resolution (lower case) because I made it as small, specific, and attainable it could possibly be while still affecting some meaningful change in my life. This approach is inspired by my girlfriend, who annually adds one or two small good habits to her life. This year it was to bring her own canvas bag to the grocery store and thereby decrease that form of human wastefulness by a fraction of one over three billion, which is, after all, the only way you can really change the world. This approach is also inspired by an attempt to avoid the failures listed in the previous paragraph, some of which are frequent visitors to my life-shaped plans.

So this year I've started drinking more water, because water is good for you. There are several things to note about this decisions:

1. I think water is about the most boring thing a person can drink. I cannot tolerate drinking only water while I'm eating, as it basically makes the meal extremely dull. Water from a glass is the most boring variety, but I have found, strangely, that water from a bottle (tap water is just fine, it's the vessel not the source that matters here) is much easier to drink. Thus, the general promise to myself to drink more water took a more concrete and attainable form: one bottle between breakfast and lunch, one between lunch and dinner, one between dinner and bed. That's 1.5 more liters of water than I have ever regularly consumed in my life.

2. I pee a lot now.

3. I feel healthier, whether because of the actual numerous health benefits of drinking water, or because of the psychosomatic effects of doing something that is supposed to be good for you. It doesn't matter which one. This is all about results, not causes.

4. Most importantly, I have demonstrated to myself that the baby steps approach to life change is effective, and I'm going to keep it up. I'd like to thank Richard Dryfus's character in "What About Bob?" for sending me down the "baby steps" road. That guy is a genius, even if he did try to kill Bill Murrray.

5. Stay on topic!

6. And who says that the baby steps process has to start at the beginning of the year. That's pretty arbitrary, isn't it? Maybe I'll enact a New-Mid-Year's Resolution. Can't see why not.

So, are there any good NYRs - failed, successful, or otherwise - out there worth mentioning? Did anyone promise to lay off the smack or quit beating their wife?