K.T.: If I were smart I wouldn’t have gone to law school.
All-purpose self-denigration.
***
New Year’s resolutions, broken after three well-wishing weeks, are in order. Years past witnessed adoption of simple resolutions like lost children, most notable among them the omnipresent gentle theme of happiness. That’s not fair or right, because no one of right mind living in our fractured world could stay happy for an entire year. You can try, but how many mood elevators must you take until the human body dissolves into base componenting?
Based on that passage you can see why my resolutions never succeed.
I suppose the problem is dropping all your effort into one or two substantial, yet unattainable, goals. Disheartening when you fail, and you do fail. Then, you give up on the whole idea of resolving, filing it away under “Good ideas that never really took shape,” like Flock of Seagulls hair and marriage. Ironic, since resolve is just what you need to keep up with it.
First semester, first year of law school, professor D.G. warned us against shotgunning on the final exam. Don’t see what’s not there. Stop listing every damnable idea. It impresses no one that you can regurgitate your outline whole onto the page. Needless to say (not very needless, as I find the need to state outweighs the need to not say), I painted the exam using a mop and every color paint in the visible spectrum. Hell, I may have dipped into infrared and ultraviolet, so thorough was my onslaught against conciseness and brevity.
This is not a law school final, and I have little to lose by shotgunning resolutions onto the page. So, we’ll list some today, and continue Friday as the arbitrary Newer Year creeps up on us.
***
I resolve to be happy. What a hypocrite, I can feel you thinking. It’s not a bad resolution, and I’ve sworn this silent oath so many years it has become a personal tradition, like saying “Bless you” to bar the devil’s entry into the body via sneeze. Besides, next year I’ll need to work harder than before to pull it off.
I resolve to win one fantasy sport league next year. My first year, I went to the finals of three leagues, won two of them. That experience spoiled me, spoiled me rotten. Early success can lead to later bitterness, as you can never recapture that initial flair (flare?) of greatness. Witness child actors twenty years later. I will win. Unless I lose. Then I will lose. Damnit.
I resolve to grow taller, not wider. We need to reverse this trend of growing wider, not taller. Dare I undergo that wild medical procedure which entails fracturing my femurs, then prising the ends apart a little each day to lengthen the bone? Its all the rage in
I resolve to learn how to backflip. Based on hearsay, you can back/kick flip off a wall. Run towards it, plant your nondominant foot against the wall, kick off the ground with your dominant leg, and let the force reorient you, hopefully the full three hundred and sixty degrees. You would think that, as much as I need my brain, I would take precautions to prevent head trauma. And you’d be wrong, wrong as a man’s love for a tree’s knothole.
I resolve to beat Kingdom Hearts II. This game could rekindle my love of wasting time via video gaming. A sorry camera system could induce seizures and cursing. Still, I’ve got to try, got to try, got to go-woah-woah-woah-woah.
I resolve to not write while high off of cold medicine.
I resolve to stop lying.
I resolve to stop making untenable promises to myself.
I resolve to smile more, at friends and strangers. Now, of all the resolutions, I think this might be the one that I make a concerted effort to keep. However, though the effort be concerted, hopefully my face shall not be compressed into a tiny frown that demonstrates how concerting I am. Let my concentration be expressed through a wide smile. Yeah. We’ll discuss the implications of why I think this might be a good one to keep on Friday, along with other resolutions that may resolve from the shimmering ether that is my feverish imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment