Happy New Year!

Today is January 9, 2009. I am already nine days into this, the best year of my life, and I have yet to *gasp* make my New Year’s Resolutions.

How in the world am I going to make it through my year? I have no map of what I’m going to be. No image set out of the better person I aspire to become. No reason to quit my nasty habits. I missed the deadline. The year began without me. Guess I’ll have to wait until 2010. Whew. What a relief.

Now I don’t have to feel the guilt when I break my resolutions. Unlike 2008, which began with high aspirations. Rules that if followed would change my life. “Be great in 2008” was my motto. Not only did I slide into my old, and very established habits, which then in turn meant I was breaking my goals, at some point I realized that I should make my new resolutions (this was in May) the exact OPPOSITE and see if I could knock that ball out of the park. So I spent the rest of the year gaining weight, not working out , eating like crap, and some other unmentionables. I finished 2008 such a major success after the revision of my resolutions that guilt was not a emotion I felt.

I can tell that many of you made your resolutions, however. This is why I can't get a parking space at the gym, or when I'm on the track at the rec center you're in my way. Fortunately I can count on half of you being gone in two weeks, and the rest by the end of February. And once you actually break your resolution, you won't be back. Because you failed. So, no need to start again until next year. Feel bad about your failure, eat a bowl of ice cream, and see you next Janurary.

OR, you could, of course, work on yourself all year. A novel thought, I know, but just throwing it out there. You know, kinda set goals that change regularly like you do. Nah.

So I am proclaiming that this year, I am taking a stand. I am not making New Year’s resolutions. Dick Clark can kiss my lily white….knees. I am what I am, and that’s all that I am….and no, I don’t think I’m a sailorman. I’m just Manda. I'm a constant work in progress, realistic that I can't just up and morph into someone new every January and hope it sticks.

That's just the way I like it.