Mindy Newell: To Resolve Not To Resolve
Today we are five days into the New Year, and I hope that for all of you 2015 has been rocking.
As Martha mentioned in her latest column, January is the traditional time for making resolutions. Well, I’m not much for making resolutions generally, and January is my least favorite month. It’s drab and dull and boring, a big letdown after the “holiday season,” with not much to look forward to other than lousy weather and 31 days to get through until February – not that I’m so nuts about February, except that it’s short and the days are just beginning to get noticeably longer. But, back to January.
There should be a national holiday in the middle of the month, “National Doldrums Day” to break up the monotony. All right, if your birthday or wedding anniversary or some other personal celebration is in January, I apologize, but there should be something for the rest of us, don’cha think?
Also, I’ve always thought that resolution is a funny word to use when referring to a new start or a new promise. As a writer, resolution means the end of the story’s conflict or problem, as in:
The Guardians of the Galaxy are no longer criminals, their crimes having been erased. Quill opens the last present he mother gave him, a cassette of her favorite songs, and also discovers that he isn’t fully human; his father came from an ancient, but unknown, species. They board the rebuilt Milano, carrying a sapling of Groot.
And as an operating room nurse, resolution refers to the clarity of an image from an MRI or X-ray, as in:
Surgeon: “The resolution sucks. I can’t see a fucking thing.”
X-ray Tech: “What the fuck you want from me? Goddamn C-arm is about 100 years old and the hospital is too cheap to buy a new one.”
I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s a verbatim conversation or not.
It’s actually September that feels like the beginning of the year for me (and I would guess most of you) thanks to the indoctrination of the American school system… and perhaps just a bit due to the Jewish New Year occurring in the fall.
But of course resolution also means “to make a decision,” which accounts for how crowded my gym gets right after New Year’s every January – and also around April or May, as the summer nears – as people “resolve” to lose weight and/or get buff. Which is another reason why I hate January. The Body Pump class is so damn crowded and just try getting on the treadmill.
And the other thing about resolutions in January is that, let’s face, they’re so often the exact same ones a person made the year before.
“Okay, I mean it this time. I’m going to:
- Fill in here.
- Fill in here.
- Fill in here.
- Fill in here.
- Fill in here.
Hey, why should I embarrass myself by repeating the same old same-olds?
Check back here next year for my 2016 resolutions.
• • • • •
But there is one think I’m going to do this year; in fact I’m going to do it as soon as I’m done writing this and sending it off to Mike to edit.
I’m going to donate to the Norm Breyfogle Medical Stroke Fund. See that box over to the right?
Make a resolution to click on it as soon as you’re done reading this.
Make a resolution to donate as much as you can afford, even if it’s only $1.00
Make a resolution.
Just do it.
