I don’t know if it’s superstition or the break-up or laziness, but I didn’t want to make a long list of resolutions this year.  There are a lot of specific things I want to accomplish, but those are just the big, daunting, somewhat tedious items on my to-do list.  The one thing I’ve been thinking about most is why my relationship failed, why I’m still not achieving the level of success in my off-line writing I thought I would be achieving by now and why I’m still 10 pounds away from my ever changing goal weight.  And the answer is not a pleasant one.

I’ve spent most of my life doing the minimum.  This is what happens when you’re told you’re smart for most of your habit forming years.  Instead of telling me that if I worked hard I would be able to get the things I wanted, I was told I was smart, I would be OK.  “You’re smart, you’ll figure out a way to get that 20 page paper done by tomorrow that you’ve known about for 3 months.”  Guess what, I always got it done.  I always spent the entire semester dreading that final weekend before it was due, but never got off my ass and did the research.  So here I am, approaching 32 and I’m still cramming for life.  Here’s the thing, you can’t cram for your relationship, you have to do the work every day.  You can’t cram for your screenplay, you have to sit your ass in the chair and write.  You can’t cram for weight loss, you have to - well, you get the point.

So, on December 17th, 2007, my world got flipped around, I’m starting over and instead of making a grand sweeping change that is sure to be given up on in one month - like RUN EVERY DAY OR DIE - I’m resolving to ‘try a little harder.’  It sounds so simple and maybe it’s too simple, but so far it’s working.  All I have to do to keep this resolution is ask myself a couple times a day, “Did you try a little harder, can you do a little more?”  And if I say yes I can try a little harder, I can do a little more - I run a little faster, I add an extra set of push-ups, I write a few more pages.  Generally, I’m only asking the question if I know I can try a little harder, but it helps to have the extra push even if it comes from me.

I expect to resist this in a few months, I expect to get to a point where I want to tell myself to shut up, but one aspect of my personality that I shove in the corner most days is a supreme level of stubbornness.  I am a stubborn mother-fucker, and I mean to get the most out of that.  At least, I’ll try to.