Around every New Year’s Eve I end up writing an introspective post, though I’ve omitted publishing some of them in the past. The purpose of them is really more to provide me with a venue for thinking out loud than for your reading pleasure. This one is for both you and me.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I simply don’t. Every time I’ve attempted to make some in the past they lived up to the moment I was tempted to break them, and then it was all over. No use in making myself promises I know I won’t keep, right? Instead of doing something so symbolic I let myself get inspired by other things. For example, I moved from SD to LA and decided that I’d get myself into great shape by next summer, no excuses. It is now six months later and I’ve gone from 269lbs to 229lbs, with about 25lbs left to go by June. It works much better for me than using a holiday according to a religiously-motivated semi-arbitrary calendar system. Make no mistake, I make sure to properly party it up ever year, but that’s a different story.

So I sit here today, on January 3rd, 2008, after about two days of pondering the state of the union that is my life, and I just realized that I’ve subconsciously made a faux New Year’s resolution: to be better to myself. We all do things wrong to ourselves and others, but I talk and promise myself all kinds of fancy things (material and not) all the time and then discard the ideas for one reason or another. It’s time to end that.

How, you ask?

Easy - I need to start taking promises to myself seriously. If a friend promised something and didn’t own up to it I would be quite disappointed. In the past, however, the same rules didn’t apply to myself. I’ve been promising myself a camera for years now and do I have one? Take a wild guess. I’ve been on many weight loss marathons and they’ve all failed except for the current one, though I’ve slipped lately. Yesterday I decided to completely quit consuming anything at work and today I pushed myself one step further at the gym. It’ll get better in a matter of days, I’m confident. I’m mad at myself for slacking off with exercise the last month or so. I should always be mad at myself for failing like that.

I have goals of all kinds. The fact that they’re still unaccomplished is virtually solely the result of my not trying hard enough. I’ve got some toys on my shopping list. I’ve got some discipline on my to-do list. I’ve got some health issues that need to be taken care of, stat. And I’m apparently still single.

It’s time I start doing good things for myself. I did one just recently and thinking about the effects puts a smile on my face.

This year will be my year. My fucking year. I promise.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under personal.