keeping New Year's resolutions

Hello to all!

Well, the Big Day has been and gone already! Crazy, when you think of it. We spend roughly half the year wishing for the current year to end, planning to start a new diet/me routine/exercise/new hobby when the clock strikes 12 on the night of December 31st, being too tired, too hungover/too lazy to ruin a perfectly good day, whatever your excuse is. And so your resolutions disappear into thin air.

Isn't that what usually happens? Then you get to 2nd - 3rd January and think, hell, I wasn't really interested in that resolution anyway, so life continues as normal. Why this happens is always a source of intrigue to me, as I suffer badly from it as well.

The way I have been keeping resolutions, for the last five or so years anyway, no -  I haven't given up making them! - is to ignore the first week of New Year, and start implementing my resolutions on the 7th or whatever is within 10 days of January 1st. And I don't, any more, make a list so high, a horse couldn't jump them. I realized, around the same time as I decided NOT to start my resolutions on January 1st, that if I got too ambitious, too greedy, too anything, then I was setting myself up for failure right from the go button.

So, I make 2 now. Just 2. Whatever is my main one for the year - write now, write more, trim my roses 4 times a year, and that  is it. I write these on bright Post It notes and stick them on the side of the cupboard next to my monitor.( I have a tiny space where the monitor, computer, a desk and me fit that is about 3" X 3' and that holds everything!), and there they stay, right where every time I look at the monitor, my eyes slide sideways to those bright, bright, BRIGHT Post It notes. They get changed to another colour, equally as bright, several times a year when they look slightly dull or bedraggled. The roses even have dates to be done on, depending on the weather, and a time limit of ONE week.

When I have got these two resolutions under control, about three months into the year, then I look at another 2 resolutions. This also goes with the seasons, so I can chop and change. But I always keep following the first two as I add another one or two. That way, I can devote an entire year to any of the resolutions, and, if one isn't panning out, then I make a concentrated effort to ensure that its replacement has my full attention.

Sometimes this way of doing things builds on the first part. For instance, with the roses, a follow-on could be to fertilize them twice a year. Or mulch them. or whatever, including(sob!) replace them, if they have died, despite my care, and, as where I live, has very bad Blackspot and assorted other problems, including not much water, there are numerous reasons why the poor things sometimes struggle. Or they are simply a bad batch from where ever I bought them.

So, if your way has not worked for you before, maybe you'd like to try my way. And, if it fails, at least you can blame me, instead of yourself!