A Year is a Lot of Time to Waste

I’m afraid of commitment, so I don’t make New Years resolutions.  I do make resolutions, but not New Years ones.  A year is a long, long time after all, and six months in I might change my mind.  Making a decision?  Oh, not me.  Do you know how long it takes me to pick out a bag of chips?  I mean, what if there’s a better flavour?  What if I change my mind?

But I am a planner.  I make one month plans, I make one week plans.  And now I feel the need to make a one year plan.  “Like New Year’s resolutions?” my coworker asked, when I told her this.

“No.  Well… yes.  No.  It’s different.”  I mean, it’s a plan, not a wish, right?  That’s different, right?

I’ve got a whole list of plans by now, and the whole things scares the pants off of me when I think about it, which means I can’t think about it right now because I’m in public.  I guess I’ll chance it.  Maybe the boots will keep the pants in place.

I have financial goals–pay off my car, for instance.  I have health goals–losing weight, of course.  I mean, it was working before Christmas, it should work now.  I have writing goals–a stack of them.  I plan to publish for the first time in 2014, and this scares me even more than my list of goals.  I also have a goal of how many books I want to read, and on what subjects.  And, best of all, my sister and I have planned a trip for the summer when the plant shuts down.

I’ve heard it said that “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, but they wildly underestimate what they can do in ten years”.  And I suspect this may translate into months as well.  What could I accomplish in twelve months if I deliberately planned this out?  When I began writing a to-do list for the week, it was because I was tired of forgetting things.  In one year, you can forget a lot.  I don’t want to forget the things that were important at the beginning of the year.  I don’t want a year to go by haphazardly, because time is the most important resource I have.  I don’t want my money to go to the wind, because I spend far too much time to get it.  I don’t want to finish another year without progress in my fitness, because after a few of those years I’ll wish I’d taken better care of myself.  I want to finish the year with better relationships, and new ones.

I want to thrive in 2014.

2013 was a hard year, and I’ve come through with scars on my body and on my heart.  I am sorry for the bitterness that has taken root in my soul, and for the spiritual complacency that I see in myself.  I’m sorry it was necessary to spend so much of my year at work, because it seems to have strained my relationship with my family.  I’m sorry I spent so much money on myself.  I wish I’d saved it, or spent it on others.

I don’t want 2014 to end like that.

And so, I resolve to plan.  I guess I’ll finish the plan tomorrow.  Yeah, tomorrow.