"So, did you make any New Year's resolutions?"
Yeah. Have you?
Indeed, things I resolve to do in my life are always there. For some bizarre reason, we saw January 1 as the artificial bookmark for making change. Frankly, if you need to lose weight or quit smoking, you could have just as easily done it last August 4. And you would have been better off.
Then, there's the social angle of it. I've heard recently from people who know that on-line dating sites have the single highest traffic of the year on January 1. Folks who were alone at midnight the night before. People who weren't alone but wanted to be with somebody else. Men and women who spent the evening staring at their hamsters spinning on a wheel.
Again, this is silliness beyond compare. If you want to branch out socially, do it. Don't wait for some artificial holiday to make your move. If you are in the right mindset, go for it. But make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Indeed, I would compare looking for a mate on January 1 the same as getting a puppy for Christmas. Sure, it's a romantic and warm scenario. Until, of course, you have to walk them.
But I digress...
While I do make some resolutions (and yes, I will share at the end, you nosey Parkers), I look back at my life and realize that there were some occasions in my life where my world did promise to be changing around the first of the year. In some instances, it was just life intervening and prompting the alteration in my course. At one instance, it was all my own doing.
I was a fat kid. No lie. I've written before about the weight struggle in my youth which always seemed to bother me the most whenever my gym class had to that blasted shuttle run for the President's National Fitness Test. You know the drill.
Run down the schoolyard. Pick up an eraser. Bring it back. Run down the schoolyard. Pick up the second eraser. Bring it back. And, as I crossed the finish line, I'd always hear this from whatever dirtbag was my gym teacher at the time.
"Len, you've got the slowest time in the class."
Well, he probably didn't say it out loud. But I knew he was thinking it.
And that's the way I bounced pretty much for the first sixteen years of my life.
The cow tipping point came in senior year of high school. On the very first gym class of the year, my right knee gave out and started a lifetime of hobbles for me. With me on the Autumn disabled list, the little activity and exercise I usually endured had dwindled down to zero. I would come home from school, plant myself in front of the television, and open the wrapper of something. And then something else. And then something else.
By December, I would scrape both the walls on both sides of any hallway.
For some inexplicable reason, I resolved to make a change on January 1.
I'm not sure what propelled me to venture onto a diet. At the time, there was this doctor Dr. Irwin Stillman schlepping from one talk show to another hawking his water diet. Of course, since he was on television a lot, I got to see him a lot.
Hmmmm? Drink eight glasses of water a day? I can do that.
Hmmmm? And watch your portions of food? Can I do that?
As soon as January 1 passed, I announced my plans to flush out my system. And pretty much have to hit the bathroom between every single class of my school day. I dictated to my parents what I would need to achieve my goal of losing fifty pounds. Low calorie this. Sugar free that. To their credit, they got behind me. And, frankly, if they were behind me at this point, you really couldn't see them.
Rim shot.
Along with the Stillman Diet, I started to exercise. Every night at 7PM for thirty minutes, I would close the door to my room and do as many exercises as I could come up with. Sit-ups, push-ups, twists, turns. I had no clue what I was doing, but it sounded and felt right.
By April, I had lost it all.
It's a fight to this day. Now I have a personal trainer who is behind me every step of the way. And, yes, sometimes you really can see her.
As I wrote above, there were other calendar and year flips that gave me cause to reflect on what the future was going to bring.
Two days before Christmas one year in my adulthood, I learned that my dad had probably six months to live. When you're standing next to somebody's hospital bed on Christmas Day and know that these will be the very last holidays you will spend together, it provides an unsettling portent to the next year.
And I've written before about my mother, several years later, in the hospital for a broken hip on New Year's Eve and suffering a heart attack that evening. They brought her back because there was no DNR, but she was really gone. Indeed, my very first act of that new year was to sign paperwork to basically let her go. Again, another sweeping change that was occurring "conveniently" as the year was moving on.
In both these cases, it wasn't time for any silly resolutions. It was really a time for reflect on the future. And pick myself up to move on.
Two years later on New Year's Day in my Westchester apartment, I stared at the small artificial Christmas tree that had followed me from my childhood home with my parents all the way to my own place. I thought about the new year and the change that was coming with it. My writing partner and I had an agent and would be moving to Los Angeles in February. A new beginning with all the hopes and dreams and fears attached. This would be a move that I never would regret, regardless of what happened.
I thought about all those Christmas memories on the East Coast. Good ones. Bad ones. I found that the latter was overriding the former. Sensory perception has kept me away from spending the holidays in New York ever since. I did not know that as I stared at my mother's long time ornaments that day. After packing them away in the box in the closet, I did not know that I would not open them ever again.
They're still there. I'm still here. Reflecting on the good years and the not-so-good years. But, always looking forward to what the new year will bring. Not in terms of weight loss or other inane barometers. Friends, it's all about the big picture.
Of course, as I promised, there are a few resolutions I make. Most of them simply carry over from one year to the next.
Read more. I don't really, unless I'm on an airplane.
Eat at least two meals a week that are meatless. I told you the diet is still a struggle. This is a promise I made to my personal trainer.
Go on a cruise with some friends. It's on my list and has been for years. It will happen. Some day.
Spend more time with friends that are long in tenure. I gravitate now to enjoy more frequently those that have shared histories with me. If you knew my parents back when, even better.
Engage with friends more in a "one-on-one" basis. Groups of five or more intimidate me. Less is more.
Of course, I suppose I resolve to be less intimidated in larger groups. Duh.
Write more. Hell, you see that happening every day. And that reminds me of a New Year's pledge I made eight years ago.
Finish my screenplay. You think I'm not re-purposing these Sunday Memory Drawers? Wait till some of you see yourselves on the big screen.
Start my own blog.
See, it is possible. Now, excuse me while I go and do my morning stretches.
Dinner last night: French dip panini at the Arclight Cafe.
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