New Year Resolutions

1.  Spend less time with my family.  How can I get my research done and tell them where they came from if I spend all my spare time hanging around with them?

2.  Write something for the blog twice a month.  How hard is it?  If you’re me, harder than it should be.  The problem is every time I sit down to write something I just have to check one thing or two or twelve and then it’s tomorrow. Must learn to accept lack of knowledge and to practice brevity.  Hah, not happening.

2b.  Give Pat a break and reliably write something twice a month.

3.  Get organized.

4.  Get organized.

5.  Clean less.  After they stop laughing and recover the ability to breathe my friends will tell you that it is actually not possible for me to clean less.  It is true that I do not clean, but when I invite people for dinner I do feel the need to make a flat surface available for holding dishes and flatware and such. This means that I declutter and when I start decluttering I can’t stop.  Since I am not an organized person (see resolutions 3 and 4) this means everything gets put in some random place never to be seen again.  No more cleaning.

6.  Tame The Beast. .  I have a long list of places to write to, places to call, and websites to investigate.  I will do one thing on that list every day, okay, every week.  Most importantly nothing goes on the list unless something comes off.  The beast may not get shorter, but at least it will stop growing.

7.  Accept the piles, love the piles, become one with the piles.  Returning once again to the fact that I am not well organized, my office is a mass of piles of paper, books, post-it notes, magazines and lots of other stuff.  Some of these piles have enough dust on them to make it seem like tiny ecosystems have developed in their depths.  Sometimes late at night the tiny people talk to me.  But weird as it seems, I can find things in the piles.  It’s when I try to organize that I get into trouble.  This year I will embrace the pile system and no cob will be deprived of its web.

8.  Gain weight.  Might as well make one resolution that I will actually keep.

9.  Be better.  Better, nicer, kinder, more patient, more appreciative, more grateful. I know that’s more than one thing, but I consider myself a work in progress and this year I hope to be a slightly better version of the original.

That’s my list for this year and I’m going to get right to it, just as soon as I finish the Christmas cards.