Resolve

Resolutions bug me. The idea behind them is great: You pinpoint areas of your life that need improvement, and you dedicate the new year to making the necessary changes. You hit the gym, you eat all natural foods, you start learning a new language. The problem is that, by April, you’re sick of the gym, you’re back to eating chocolate-covered pretzels, and the only thing you’ve learned to say in French is “I have a flesh wound and need to see a doctor.”

Which makes resolutions an exercise in frivolity, at least in my case. Major props to the people who can stick with them, but they seem to be in be in the minority. The rest of us mean well, but … life. Enough said.

You’d think I’d stop making resolutions altogether, feeling the way I do about them, but no. There’s something about the end of a calendar year, arbitrary though it is, that infuses us with something fresh and vital, a yearning for more, for better. Oftentimes it also infuses us with alcohol in the form of glittery cocktails in gaudy gummy bear colors. That tends to lube the gears a bit, get us thinking along the lines of the grandiose. “I’m gonna resolve to learn the guitar and finish that novel I’m writing about colonial fur traders with speech impediments!” Sure you are. And I’m going to learn how to juggle chainsaws and fart in Morse Code.

My resolutions tend to the absurd and unrealistic, because let’s face it, whatever they are I’m probably not going to keep them. This is by turns depressing and liberating -- the former because it speaks to my character in unflattering ways, the latter because I can get downright ridiculous with the whole enterprise and not feel any guilt when my resolutions go unrealized. I can resolve to learn how to cook something fancier than pan-fried chicken breast, or I can resolve to set up a nudist colony on an uncharted island with a championship roller derby team. Neither is going to happen, so why not shoot for the moon?

It is in this spirit that I have cobbled together a rough list of non-goals for the new year. Some are attainable, most aren’t, and all of them in aggregate should make me a prime candidate for residency in a psychiatric research facility. And away we go.

I hereby resolve: to expand my wardrobe. Getting by on two pairs of jeans and a handful of aging heavy metal t-shirts is no way to go through life. If I didn’t stay on top of my laundry I’d run out of viable clothing options in about five days, forcing me to arrive at work clad in a wrap-around beach towel and my faded New Kids on the Block sweater from 1989. I own exactly one suit jacket, two pairs of dress pants, two pairs of black socks and four ties, three of which are the exact same shade of blue. “The clothes make the man,” as the old saying goes. I certainly hope not.

I hereby resolve: to travel to outer space. Hey, why not? It may not happen in 2017, but tourist excursions to the final frontier will be a reality someday. And while these trips may initially be accessible only to the rich, I’m sure I’ll be raking in mad coin once I finally invent a product America needs -- a mustache comb that’s also a can opener, maybe. Still working out the details. In any event, I’m a science fan, I love space, and I’m constantly pondering humankind’s role in the larger universe, so there’s no greater adventure to me than touring the heavens and sipping airborne globs of water in zero Gs. Plus, think of the epic selfies I could take up there. “Oh, that big blue ball behind me? Yeah, that’s Earth.” Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

I hereby resolve: to eat more vegetables. Instead of eating small veggie portions each day, like a healthy, sane person, I tend to eat vast quantities of them once or twice a week -- a whole can of sliced carrots on a Tuesday, for example, and then nothing ’til the weekend. Maybe I’m unaware of the ways in which the human body can store food, but I have a suspicion I’m not doing it correctly. I am not, after all, a camel. While I’m at it, I should probably stop eating so much Jell-O. Pretty sure food isn’t supposed to be the pristine blue of fresh toilet water.

I hereby resolve: to start a band called The Flaming Pants. The name is a blatant ripoff of The Flaming Lips, but it actually goes a bit deeper, because it suggests that everyone in the band is a huge liar (what with our pants being on fire and all). It also gives us an easy gimmick. We play our music, and about halfway through our set -- during a paint-peeling, screeching hellraiser of a song -- our trousers combust, and we rip through the crescendo with fiery tendrils lapping at our unmentionables. Of course, this is an unsafe and foolish aspiration, because even if our bodies were coated with flame-retardant material, we would risk injury to ourselves and damage to the concert venue. The whole set-piece would be a way of justifying our adoption of a moderately catchy (and derivative) band name. But hey, bands have formed for worse reasons. While I’m at it, I should probably resolve to, you know, learn an actual instrument.

Lastly, I resolve to be more optimistic. Historically speaking, optimism has never come easily to me, and attaining it may prove to be more difficult than ever, given how craptastic the past year turned out to be. It wasn’t a great year for a lot of people, truthfully. But that’s all the more reason to gather up the last shreds of our resolve and make a push for positive change. This defiant resolution may dissolve into ether come February, but darnit, making 2017 better than 2016 has to start with believing it’s possible.

To gather up momentum, I suggest we all start out small. I’ll begin by purchasing a third pair of pants.