At the beginning of 2007, I made five resolutions for the upcoming year, with the following mixed results:
1. Curb my rampant road rage. Have you ever had a great idea in theory, but in practice it turned out to be challenging and difficult to implement, so you instead scrapped it and settled for something much easier? Me too, with law school, my career plans, and this pointless resolution. Instead of getting control of my anger towards incompetent, slow drivers who crawl in the left lane and gawk at accidents and don’t use their turn signals and leave their turn signals on while exiting because THEY’RE MAKING A RIGHT INTO THE TREES OF COURSE AND CUT PEOPLE OFF AND WAIT TOO LONG AT TURNS AND DON’T GO WHEN THE LIGHT CHANGES. Instead of dealing with these people more productively, I just stopped going to work and started working from home. Problem solved.
2. Clip my dog’s toenails on a more regular basis. This did not happen. Kobe is just not a nail-clipping kind of dog. I try everything – holding him, pinning him down, bribing him with treats, singing pop music revised to include dog-oriented lyrics – and he just won’t hold still for long enough to allow even one nail to be neatly trimmed. As a result, he licks his toes constantly (probably because they hurt) and I lovingly smile at him and coo, “Maybe if you weren’t such a bratty little monster, your feet wouldn’t hurt.” And then I eat his dog treat, just out of spite.
3. Eat at least one vegetable a day. I completed this one successfully, although sometimes it was unbelievably difficult. On several occasions when I was trying to force down healthy foods (carrots, bananas, freshly clipped grass), I gagged violently and had to play reverse tug of war with my stomach to get the food fully swallowed. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Romans didn’t even have to eat their bricks.
4. Learn to do laundry properly. This is another one where I took a different approach. I moved in with my parents a little over a month ago while deciding where to move next, and discovered that if I let my laundry pile up sufficiently, my mother is magnetically drawn to the closet where the dirty heap lives. Despite my protests, she carefully sorts my smelly clothes, launders them in appropriately separated loads, and returns them to my room in a neat pile. And that, my good readers, is the proper way to do laundry.
5. Pay off my credit card by the end of the year. Done and undone by several sales at Performance Bike, a few dinners out, and my incurable need to constantly buy new things. What? There is a sale on things at this very moment? Take my card, please, and buy me as many as you can carry. Then buy me more.
As 2008 begins, I have decided to make only one single resolution, and to commit myself to that promise fully:
1. Ride my bicycle until I cannot ride anymore, and then keep going until my legs fall off at which point I will use my hands to pedal because that is how champions roll. In order to realize my Olympic aspirations, I plan to do everything I can in this upcoming year to ensure that I am constantly improving on the bike. I will lift weights, run, ride my road bike, ride the stationary bike, ride my mountain bike, ride anything that moves, drink obscene amounts of water, and eat healthy foods. When I am not riding my bicycle, I will think about my bike, and if my thoughts stray, I will flog myself with a bicycle chain. Okay, that last part is a lie, but you get my point; this year will be about getting serious because otherwise, I will end up with a career in Government Contracts and/or Hating My Job.
My intention at this point was to write something lengthy about the steps I’m taking to get on the path to success, but instead I am going to cut this post short now. That’s my resolution, the end. Because there is a lot that stands between me and fulfilling that goal, but I know exactly what those things are and the first step is dealing with them one by one. As in, this post will ultimately be continued. Indefinitely.