Michele has a funny take on New Year’s Resolutions: “It has been my experience that the best New Year resolutions to make are the ones that are easiest to keep.” I think I am going to follow her lead.
RESOLUTIONS
— Have at least 3 obsessions with dead male movie stars per year.
— Say to friends, “No thanks, I can’t tonight, I’m busy” – and then stay home and read.
— Read an insane number of books every year. Add to the library. Buy more book shelves. Build them if you must.
— Worry obsessively over things I cannot control
— Get up at 5:30 every day and write for 3 hours before heading out into the world.
— Make sure Cashel knows that his Auntie Sheila is there for him
— Blog.
— Watch Bring It On at least once a month
— Same with Office Space and Notting Hill
— Moisturize skin daily
— Rant about how much I hate Renee Zellweger as much as possible
— Same with Jewel. Rant about Jewel MORE
Add your own in the comments.
My one resolution this year is to write less overwrought and less rambling.. realizing Im already over-complicating the explanation of the point I was going to make I’ll then get distracted by a better point that has just occurred to me, I’ll stumble on while trying desperately to recollect and refine my thoughts and finish by declaring how right I would have been if I had kept the sentence short and definitive.
Resolution # 1: Make it to New York for Hitchhikers. Get drunk with friends.
The “if the movie should suck” contingency reslotion: hunt down cast and crew. Kill them.
Resolution # 2: Write more shit Jewel-style poetry.
My main resolution is quite sad: continue thinking about this person I can’t be with. Who, even if I were with him, would probably drive me crazy. But whom I love nonetheless.
Poor me.
Resolution #2: wallow in self-pity.
Resolution #1:
Stay alive
Resolution #2:
Don’t kill anyone
If I can keep those two, I should be pretty happy.
Sheila – I’d like to see if you can make this resolution: To keep an open mind about Star Wars III ;)
1: I promise to laugh more at babies who develop slowly.
2: I would like to start taking my loved ones more for granted.
3: I promise to dislike instantly and without reservation the next 10 people who say “my resolution is not to make resolutions.”
4: On a necessarily serious note, I would really, really like to live long enough to make resolutions in 2006. I will thank Sheila every time she posts a fantastic, obsessive, raving essay and I will thank her in comments and in email for making what very well may be my last year that much better. I promise to keep blogging about my fight with cancer all the way through. I promise, finally, to stop taking fun, light-hearted posts and turning them suddenly uncomfortable and “Ew, this blogging thing is supposed to be relaxingly antiseptic and impersonal” feeling.
If I can fit it in, I would like to wallow in some of Anne’s self-pity. I’ve run fresh out of my own by now. (“Anne’s self-pity? You’re soaking in it!”)
#1 -Write something I am truly proud of.
#2 -Burn it.
#1- Read Sheila, Blind Cavefish, and Dooce every day.
#2- Check the above blogs about 800 times a day to see if they have posted since the last update.
#3- Check AGAIN, just to make sure they haven’t posted since the last time I checked.
Hey I can work with this idea. Let’s see, these should be pretty easy:
1. Never do today what I can put off until tomorrow.
2. Shamelessly spoil my dog.
3. Continue my heroic quest to keep the Grain Belt Brewing Co. of New Ulm, MN in business by drinking scandalous amounts of beer.
4. Spend way too much time on the Internet.
5. Spend more time fishing(this is a two-fer, see number 3).
Barry –
Sadly, the point of my resolution list is to only make resolutions that are EASY. Therefore … er … no. No open mind about Star Wars III. :)
Anne –
Woah. Er … all I can say is: I totally understand what you’re going through. Major deja vu there.
peteb:
The wording of your resolution is absolutely hilarious, considering what your resolution actually IS.
Big Dan:
Don’t know what to say. Just know that my thoughts are with you, wishing you HEALTH and WELLNESS in this coming year.
A resolution like yours puts all the rest into perspective.
I agree – Dan’s problem makes mine look small. Especially because I’m totally exaggerating. I’ve been into this person for about a year, although it’s beyond hopeless, but I think on some level I like having some hopeless romance going. Gives life a special tragic luminous glow. Some martyrish French Lieutenant’s Woman streak in me, I guess. Endemic to a certain variety of Irish girl. :)
I think my only resolution will be to have more fun in 2005. It’s something I need to do, something I can do, and something that will be good for me if I actually do it. It’s the perfect resolution…
Oh, stop it. I just happened to be the one who got diagnosed. There but for the grace of God go any one of us.
Now let me get back to voting in the Best Literary Blog competition.
Sheila: I’ve voted my one time, like a good American. However, you’re one good post on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” away from me voting several dozen more times.
By the by, here’s my last word on cancer: if this thing turns out to be terminal, I’m sending you a list of my favorite Shakespearean works and demanding your comments.
I don’t threaten lightly! I threaten very seriously and with absolutely nothing to back it up.
I’m fresh off 30 pages on Othello, Hamlet and Indifference, so just give me room!
Gee, Sheila, I don’t know about watching “Office Space” once a month. Who needs the movie? I get plenty of that kind of insanity just going to work!
Anne, I highly admire your resolution, and I think it should be mine as well, with the genders reversed, of course. A friend recently recommended that I read the book “He’s Just Not That Into You” and think about how it applies to my own life. Grrrrr.
Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this…
Bryan –
That book is a RIOT. Read it. It’ll take you an afternoon, if that. It’s very fast.
It’ll save you so much time and worry if … when faced with the questions: “Why doesn’t she call me back?” or “Why haven’t I seen her in 2 weeks? She must be really busy …” – if you can just cut to the chase of:
“You know what? She’s just not that into me. NEXT.”
It’s definitely true that she’s just not that into me. If only saying, “Next,” were that easy.
*Sob*
:)
But ok, if you recommend the book, then I’ll read it.
Get the book. Read it. LIVE IT. :)
Someone gave it to me, and I read it in one sitting, laughing out loud at some of the anecdotes, the way some of us turn ourselves inside out to excuse somebody else’s lack of interest in us.
I remember once a great friend of mine was angsting out about why some guy hadn’t called her. We went over all the possible reasons. We turned ourselves inside out. We discussed his commitment fears, the fact that he was “intimidated” by my friend, the fact that he was really busy … (All of this is BULL SHIT, by the way. If someone is INTO YOU, THEY WILL CALL. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘TOO BUSY’.)
Anyway, at one point, my friend said, “You know…now I’m a little bit worried. Like … maybe he’s hurt or sick or in the hospital or something.”
It was at that moment that I knew we had tipped off the ledge of reality and gone plummeting into insanity. This is long before I read the book, but my reply was:
“Or, maybe he’s just not into you.”
Oh, and just a warning Bryan:
The book is BRIGHT PINK. I was way too embarrassed to read it in public. Just a heads up.
Bright pink? Sounds like I’m going to need to buy it from a bookstore that I don’t normally frequent.
Reminds me of an incident. I have a friend who is a romance novelist, and rather highly regarded as such by people who are interested in such things. After she published her most recent book, which won a romance novel award, I thought to myself that, despite the fact that I had never read a romance novel in my life, she was my friend, and I should read her book. So I went to the bookstore for the express purpose of buying her book, and there I was, standing in the romance section, several copies of her novel right in front of me.
And I just couldn’t do it.
Bryan –
I know the feeling of which you speak. Not with romance novels, but with certain other items.
I resolve to continue making comments on blogs, especially to bring them back to the original subject when they’ve strayed, and to make them stray from the original subject when they haven’t. Usually with a reference to Tolkien and/or some 80’s movies. ;-)
I’d resolve to actually start blogging myself, but then, this is supposed to be the “resolutions you’d be certain to fulfill” thread. Anything’s possible on that front, but I’m not making promises to myself or anyone else.
Dave J:
I count on your support to turn pretty much every post into a discussion about The Breakfast Club. Or Frodo.
Ah, but what if the point is that he’s just not that interested in you? Not to be too dark – but what if that’s the very source of his appeal?
Anne –
Well, I would say – that as long as you KNOW that, you’re halfway out of the hole. (I mean “you” hypothetically, of course.)
But it’s the people who don’t know or won’t admit that being treated like shit or being ignored means that – HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU – who have some real problems and waste a lot of time.
Like my friend worrying that this guy (who basically was just blowing her off because he wasn’t that into her) was in an emergency room and couldn’t get to a phone.
It’s freeing to just be able to say: “he’s not into me. NEXT.”
I mean, there have been plenty of times when I have JUST NOT been that into someone … and my signals are LOUD and CLEAR … but the person refuses to get it. I’m thinking of one guy in particular. There was no big reason why I couldn’t be with him, it’s just that … plain and simple … I wasn’t that into him.
I gave him every possible signal. I gave him the signals that I myself have received on occasion, hoping to spare him an out and out rejection.
Finally, though, his persistence forced me to say, “i am really sorry, but I am just not feelin’ it. I’m sorry.”
Ouch. But it had to be done.
In other words:
I always try to believe what someone DOES. Not what they SAY. Words are easy.
For example: “I’ll call you.”
If someone says, “I’ll call you” and then THEY DO NOT CALL – I will not sit around angsting that he is trapped in his apartment, having broken his leg, and can’t get to the phone. I will know: Oh. Okay. He totally didn’t mean what he said.
NEXT.
Oh strictly hypothetically, of course of course.
It’s true, it’s a different thing when you are resigned (ish) to it not working out. I see friends of mine try to convince themselves at length that hopeless situations are in fact not hopeless. Painful to watch.
I never really did list out my resolutions.
1) Continue obsessing over the woman who isn’t interested in me.
2) Bore my friends to tears by talking incessantly about how obsessed I am.
3) Also bore my friends to tears by talking incessantly about my enthusiasm for comparative religion (like the last time I had lunch with some former coworkers and gave them a lengthy explanation of the difference between Protestantism and Evangelicalism, as well as a monologue on the characteristics of the Pentacostal churches, or like when I explain in detail the differences between various schools of Buddhism that they have never even heard of).
4) Belch in my sister’s hearing more often.
5) Write more dirty poetry and stupid limericks.
6) Spend way too much money on books.
7) Listen to Mahler more often at very high volume.
Bryan:
Please add one more resolution, thank you:
8. Post dirty poetry and stupid limericks on either my blog or your own
There once was a fellow named Sam
Who stole a big honeybaked ham.
He went on the lam,
Got put in the clam,
And said, “I just don’t give a (*censored*)!”
Resolution 9 is post plenty of snobbish quotations from “Ulysses” on Sheila’s comment section whenever the occasion arises (like the “morose delectation” one above) :)
Hmm…let’s see….
– Maintain a habit of sketching once a day to improve my illustrative skills.
– Complete Script presentation packages from pet projects 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
– Present Design document from pet project 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
– Lose 40-60 lbs, or at least tone around my middle. Sheesh :(
– Buy a damned townhouse unlike the failed attempt in August of last year.
– Increase my flexibility so that I can kick someone over my shoulder like John Liu in ‘Incredible Kung-Fu Mission’.
– Go to London.
Seriously. How can you hate Zellweger and her “wobbly bits”?
….
Okay. I guess I can see your point …
Rick –
It’s not the wobbly bits I hate. After all, I have wobbly bits myself … I always thought that Renee Zellweger gaining weight to basically look like the rest of us saps (meanwhile: having everyone say: LOOK HOW FAT SHE IS) was a publicity stunt, and insulting, and all that shite.
I just hate her simpering apple-doll face and I hate how she seems to be over-praised for mediocre work.
I have thought about this WAY too much as you can tell.
Me and my wobbly bits … signing off now.
Happy 2005.
1. Write more and try to get paid for it
2. Stop hating myself
and if it’s not too impossible to attain..
3. Love someone else
4. Get over her.