Beginning

The new year is always an opportunity for a clean slate. It's arbirtary, but as good a time as any to start doing whatever we have been wanting to do but haven't got around to. I like to use December 31 as a day of sloth and excess, to make January first seem all the more clean and shiny.

I would like to start the new year with all the laundry clean, folded and put away. I would like the blasted "orphan sock" basket empty. I would like the house clean and the driveway shoveled. I would like all the sheets to be changed and the Christmas tree taken down and all the new stuff put away. I would like my legs to be waxed and my roots dyed.

Some of those are possible, but most are unlikely today. We will tidy, eat and drink too much, maybe throw some laundry on. Tomorrow, when everything is closed, I will take the tree down, clean properly, eat nutritiously, and drink water. I may even get a good run in. Today, I will do the bare necessities, and swear that tomorrow, I will be good. As long as I can be. I will be reborn as the "me" of 2006, with all good intentions, cleansed of my bad habits and ready to start the new year in the best possible state of being.

Really, I shouldn't be too hard on myself. I don't have any destructive habits I need to resolve to stop. I don't smoke, I don't (usually) drink to excess, I eat carefully, drink lots of water, I exercise regularly. I do drink too much coffee, but I have tuned into the reports that say coffee is at least not bad for you, and at best good for you, and ignored the ones which tell me it causes cancer. I did very well over Christmas, never going more than 48 hours without exercise. I still weigh what I did 5 or 10 years ago, so I guess I'm doing well in the health department.

I would like to be more tidy, more patient, and more involved with my kids. Not necessarily in that order (that order would not be politically correct). I would like to be more adventurous in a number of areas, including but not limited to food, books, and travel (the g-rated nature of this blog prevents me from mentioning any other areas). I would like to be more fit.

All of the areas listed above are areas of self-improvement I would like to make, and a new year is as good a time as any. What I should do, is address each item as it occurs to me throughout the year, but my fundamentally lazy and self-focused nature manufactures permission to procrastinate changes just a little longer. So it's time to poop or get off the pot. I will use the new year as my arbitrary starting point for changing the things I want to change. But I will not make specific resolutions. They just set you up for failure. I have to say, though, that I look forward to being able to say "I haven't done x yet this year..." Seems to lend it some credibility. Gives me some inspiration to keep going. Too bad I'll start discounting and writing off my lapses by noon tomorrow, but I'll celebrate the victories as I deserve them.

Now we're off for an evening of excess which will no doubt throw the first day of 2006 and the vitruous "new and improved me" into stark relief. Hopefully it will inspire the good efforts to continue longer than a few hours. I'll keep you posted.