You Say You Want A Revolution...

New Year’s Revolutions….

Revolutions?  No, that’s not a typo.  I didn’t mean to type resolutions, although this is what today’s topic is.  Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions? Have you ever made any?  I’m going to go out on a limb here, as they say. (Did you ever wonder who “they” are and why we care what they say, but I digress.)  I’ll bet at some point in your life you made a few.

Therein lies the problem.  It’s much easier to make them than it is to keep them.  Right?  They seem to take on a self-defeating life of their own once we make them and they come around to haunt us till we resolve to never do it again, or start making up new ones for the upcoming year.

Sometime around the first of November we start thinking about the holiday season.  Dinners with family and friends are planned.  Cards are bought, put in a drawer to be either mailed too late or saved for next year, and we consider what we want to change in the upcoming new year.  Some of the most obvious and widely made are: lose weight, quit smoking, get in shape, be nicer to… (fill in the blank) and learn a foreign language.  (A suggestion on the last one:  Call your local bank and “press two.”)

And now it’s Thanksgiving Day.  The family is gathered around.  The kitchen looks like the mess hall for the Third Army with enough food for the entire assembled Soldiers and you have some of all of it.  Next comes football or a nap.  You are so full you think you’ll never need food again and you can hibernate till spring.  After everyone is gone, you have another piece of pie, maybe a left-over turkey leg, some of that sweet potato thingy that Aunt Betty brought and by midnight when you can’t sleep, your first New Year’s Revolution is made.  Lose weight.  Beginning after Christmas dinner and the New Year’s Eve party, of course.  The next morning when you reluctantly step on the scales, reaffirm what you already knew and take a good look at yourself in the mirror, the second one is made.  Get in shape.  Soon.  After Christmas etc., etc.

Six weeks later, it’s New Year’s Eve, drink in hand you toast the beginning of the first day of the new year and the NEW YOU!  Of course, the other hand is filled with a plate of small munchie-crunchies stacked as tall as the Eifel Tower and there is a cigarette clutched in your drink hand.

Twelve hours later you wake up and wonder if you are dead and if you’re alive you wonder why. 

Every rule has its exception and New Year’s Resolutions are self-made rules so… Now for a word of explanation.   You joined the gym and went for almost two weeks.  Eating better or less or healthy takes an effort and you have to work and sometimes go to lunch with Fred and Mary and they’re not on a diet, and you only smoke now when you have a drink…after work with Fred and Mary or at the game with the guys or gals.  You get the picture.  You’ve come full circle.  A Revolution.

Don’t feel bad you’re in good company.  We all do it.  So…if you’ll excuse me, I have to go join a gym, quit smoking, lose some weight, be nice to people who like…. (fill in the blank) and write more every day.

By the Way…did I mention that the latest novel in my Johnny Morocco series came out on December 23^rd?  It’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million etc.  I was going to mention it in Dec as a New Year’s Resolution, but you know what they say.