The Problem With New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year! This time of year everybody seems to want to do New Year's resolutions. I have a bit problem with those. The problem is that I never seem to follow through on them. If you are like me, you set New Year's resolutions because you want to improve your life a little bit in the coming year. How many of us actually follow through on these goals?

A friend of mine posted an article on Facebook from CRACKED.com titled 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person (thanks, Rex!). It spoke about how people don't really care what education you have or what kind of person you are, they really only care about what you can do for them.

The other day I listened to Dr. Matt Woolley, a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in Sale Lake City and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah, speak about this same subject... how New Year's Resolutions are "lame". They are lame because unless you really care about the resolution (or goal), you are not going to follow through on it, that just sets us up for failure. (By the way, you can catch Dr. Matt's wisdom on The Shrink Show website and podcast, and he is also a frequent guest on 101.9 The End's morning show.)

The trick is to make your goals achievable, to write them down, to really believe in them, and most of all to FOLLOW THROUGH! It's the following through bit that I generally have problems with. That said, I'm still going to try.

This year I have decided not to set any New Year's resolutions, but to actually DO something.

So, in answer to the question "What are my New Year's Resolutions", I resolutely say "none". However, I do have the following goals for 2013:

• Keep an active blog with a minimum of one post per week (how am I doing so far?)
• Learn a couple of new patterns for knitting or crochet
• Learn Adobe Photoshop (I already have the program)
• and the big one, Get a better day job

Post-Christmas Joy

Well, Christmas is over and the New Year hasn't begun. It's time for the annual trek back to the store to exchange those gifts that were the wrong size, or the wrong color, or that you just didn't like (unless it's a fruitcake... you can't exactly exchange food).

If you are like me then you had a hard time fitting all the Christmas presents into your pre-Holiday budget. Now is the time of clearance sales and great bargains on Christmas decorations for next year. You can even keep that fruitcake for next year if you want to. (My husband always said that fruitcake didn't taste right unless it had "aged" at least a year in the freezer. Well, honey... you're welcome to it. Yuck!)

This year, all the adults in the house decided to do our major shopping after the Holidays. You can spread the hit on your budget over several paychecks, you get better bargains, and in general the adults don't care if their present is late.

Orange is my favorite!

Kids on the other hand are a different story. It just wouldn't be Christmas without seeing the joy of a young child at seeing all the toys Santa left by the Christmas Tree. For example, my 20-month-old niece was very surprised at the drawing easel she received this year. I have no idea where Santa picked it up, but it's a chalk board on one side and uses dry erase crayons on the other. I'd never heard of dry erase crayons before. Of course now the trick is trying to teach the niece that crayons are not food. She also received a new play kitchen which has a stove and a microwave on it. She loves it!

I'd never thought about having little ones in my house until my niece was born. She is such a joy (and a lot of hard work... how do single parents do it?). One of the cutest things she does with me is try to get me to play "Plants vs Zombies" on my PS3. Almost every time she sees me, she gets excited and says "zombie!". It's so adorable that I just have to give in and play the game with her. If she keeps this up, I may have to change my nickname to "Zombie Jill"...

Trekkie Jill and Niece playing Plants vs. Zombies