New Year's Resolutions

I'm not a big believer in New Year's resolutions. I think I am hard enough on myself all year, every day, that I do not need to set the height of any bars at the start of the year. And more importantly, I'm the sort of person who thinks that the journey is more important than the destination. Some of the most goal-oriented people I've met are also the unhappiest.

Maybe this is because setting goals often puts us in a competitive, comparative orientation, comparing ourselves to those around us. I'm going to be as skinny as x, as successful as y, write a book like z. Then we do these things, and, oila', we're no happier than we were before. Maybe there's an a that's way hotter than x, a b that's way more successful than z, and a c who's a better-loved author than z. So we compare ourselves to them. It's like what everyone always says about New York, the tough thing about living here is that there are always tons of people who are more successful, better-looking, richer, whatever, than you. "Keeping up with the Joneses" it used to be called in the 50's -- it's a treadmill sort of thing that you have to watch out for. Who gives a fuck what the Joneses have?

On the other hand of course some degree of striving is important for happiness, I think. But I think the right kind of striving is in the doing, not in the achieving. We want to feel competent, accomplished. And sure, an accomplishment sure sounds like a goal to me. So, I'm not completely against goals. I just think that we should be wise enough to realize that the satisfaction comes from whatever it is that took us to the goal, not the goal itself.

Now, that little bit of confused, if not circular reasoning stated, here are my new year's resolutions for this year, starting with my all-time-favorite, every-year-it's-at-the-top-of-the-list resolution:

1. Eat more vegetables
2. Eat less sugar
3. Try to moderate the coffee a bit
4. Try to commit several small random acts of kindness every day
5. Try to keep the apartment a little cleaner
6. Get in touch with some old friends
7. Save some money
8. Try to get a girlfriend
9. Try to stay focused at work, even though it's incredibly boring
10. Do more yoga at home
11. Keep taking lots of pictures and making lots of prints
12. Try to be a bit more social in general
13. Sleep a lot
14. Try to restrain inspecific spending impulses
15. Try to restrain specific spending impulses
16. Read lots of books
17. Don't watch so much junk TV (hello, family guy reruns)
18. Try to resist the hoarding instinct a bit more -- i.e. get rid of stuff a little faster
19. Have more dinner parties
20. Take opportunities to mentor, at work, in yoga, and elsewhere
21. Keep working on my spanish
22. Do more long-distance cycling than last year
23. Keep swimming regularly
24. Try to make some new friends
25. Try to get closer to all my friends