I wasn’t going to make any New Year’s resolutions. Been there, done that, didn’t work.
But lucky for me, last week I found an internet site that offered tailor-made resolutions, designed especially for moi. And guaranteed to make moi a more focused, more productive, and kinder person. All areas in which (I’ve been told) I need improvement.
But first I had to answer a “short” list of questions. Actually, it turned out to be a long list, and I got distracted by videos of babies playing with kittens. Even though I didn’t finish the questions, within seconds I received an email with my very own personalized, custom-made list of 2021 resolutions.
1: Finish what you start
Ouch! Got me on that one and it’s a major flaw. I don’t finish stuff. I start out gung-ho but before I’m finished with a thing, some other thing catches my attention, like babies and kittens.
As a result I have dozens of unfinished projects including half-written novels, unmailed letters, a needlepoint that says “GO BIG OR GO HO…”, and pants with one leg hemmed and one leg not.
I’d estimate that in 2020 alone, I left hundreds of projects unfinished. Maybe thousands.
2: Stop exaggerating
Yeah. I do that too. But, in my own defense, I am a writer and writers do have a tendency to stretch the truth. Especially humor writers. It comes with the territory.
Let’s not confuse what I do here with “reporting” though. Reporters “report” what happened the way it happened. What I do is “relate” what happened the way I saw it. Or wished I saw it.
And, the way I see it, exaggerating is not lying. And it’s not pretending alternative facts are true either. At the very worst, what I do is considered “stretching the truth,” aka, poetic license.
And I am not making that up.
3: Stop making stuff up
Okay. Got me again. What’s next?
4: Don’t have loud cell phone conversations in public
Hold on one minute. I am not that person. I am so careful to not bother others with my cell phone that I even stuck my head inside my purse last month when I was in the grocery store and I got a “test results” call from my doctor.
Except for standing next to rotisserie chickens with a big canvas purse over my head, no one would have noticed anything unusual until my nail glue, bottle of hand sanitizer and several linty aspirin fell out and rolled under the French bread rack at the deli counter.
There was that one time on the Cross Sound Ferry when an obnoxious man argued loudly on his cell phone with a tenant he wanted out of a rental property. A nasty man, and even a little scary because he claimed he “knew people” who would “take care of” the tenant. (But I suspect he was employing poetic license.)
This annoying man was two seats away from me, and when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to quiet down or cut it short, I pulled out my phone, winked at the couple sitting across from me, and had a loud, one-way conversation with nobody. It went like this:
“What? Oh Lordy, why did you let him go outside without his clothes on? Have the neighbors called the police again? Don’t worry about it. I ‘know someone who knows people.’ Just don’t let him get on the bus like that! Not after what happened last time.”
At this point in my conversation, the couple across from me were laughing, and the mean landlord guy was glaring. He still looked angry, but he’d stopped shouting into his phone, maybe because my little drama was more interesting, and noisier, than his.
He got up and left the cabin and the people across from me clapped. But very quietly, just in case the guy really did “know” people.
5: Watch your potty mouth
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
6 & 7: Say please and thank you
Thanks, but I already do that. I have excellent etiquette. I even say thank you to Alexa. She’s my robot, spy-thingy device that will tell me the temperature outside so I don’t have to look up at the platter-sized thermometer hanging on the deck.
In addition to answering my etiquette questions, she also gives me recipes, reminds me to turn off the oven, tells me the latest headlines and spells hard words. I mean just a few minutes ago, I said, “Alexa, spell etiquette again. Please.”
I think I heard potty mouth mumble, “Oh, my God! Open a damn dictionary!”
8: Stop procrastinating
I intend to.
9 to …
I have no idea; got distracted by some new video of babies with kittens …
Happy New Year!
