Resolution 2008

Ok, so it is true that New Year's Resolutions are just "rules" you make and then immediately break, so that you can be justified in feeling bad about yourself for the rest of the year.

Well, aren't they??

So this year instead of making pie-in-the-sky resolutions of the "right nigh on impossible" variety (get in perfect shape, don't make any mistakes, start new career as a rock star/best-selling author, etc), I am going to do something I have never done: make reasonable resolutions.

What, you didn't realize that ORP (ordinary, reasonable person) was a play on words? Of course I'm not ordinary, and sometimes not very reasonable. Trust me, this will be a new thing for me.

So.. here we go:

1) I'm going to exercise 3 times per week. It can be 15 minutes' worth, but I am going to do it. I am a much nicer person when I work out my aggressions on some piece of exercise equipment and not on some other person.

2) I am going to stop taking my job so seriously. It's not as if anyone else does. And if certain other people can do this job and not be stressed to the limit, that should tell me something.. (i.e. that I am putting in way more than I am getting back out!)

3) I am going to refocus on what is important to me; my marriage, my home, my family, my interests. I have a bad habit of putting everything else ahead of what I really care about (The house has to be spotless before I can even think about playing music! or I have worked myself to death and I'm too tired to spend any time with L during the week!)

4) I am going to pick the goals that really matter to me and pursue those few, instead of spreading myself so thin that I can't accomplish anything.

5) I am going to get a new car this year.

6) I am going to get my recording equipment and start recording my own songs. Apparently even when I pay a studio to record my music, there is always some issue; either the technician doesn't like my music and wants to rewrite it, or the musicians I am working with don't consider what I do to be "good enough" and try to turn it into something else entirely. The result is that I haven't focused on my own music in several years now. I listened to an old recording this morning, and ... damn, y'all. People can sneer at it if they want (and some have, loudly). No one has to like it or the message conveyed in it, but it ain't bad. The point is the only way I am going to get my music done in the way I want to do it is to do it myself. At this point, I am so far past caring if anyone else likes it that it doesn't even approach funny. It's my music. It's about me. I don't care if anyone else even hears it. I just want it to exist.

So, that should keep me busy for a while, ya think?