Resolve

Every year it's the same. The same self-promises of healthy eating and proper exercises, the fleeting mental commitment to be a better person. Not but eight days into the new year, I've not done much in the way of meeting my resolutions. Eight days and I'm not a better me. While I have started running again without pain, my gluttony has overtaken any physical strides made. This gluttony has once again culminated with the mousse. My ongoing quest to perfect the mousse recipe from Alton Brown. It's just so rich. Almost too rich to eat. If it weren't chocolate....

Okay. So eight days in, maybe I need to make my resolutions more "public." It seemed to work the last time I made a public pronouncement of annual resolve. The last time I proclaimed at a New Year's Party that I would get perfect grades the following semester. That was over a dozen years ago in college and probably after some sort of celebratory concoction. But this resolution did come to fruition. So, here's my resolution for this year: forget the quest for the perfect mousse.

1. Do something I've never ever done before and never dreamed that I'd actually do (skydive ?wrestle an alligator? travel to Fargo, North Dakota?).
2. Find other ways to gain and or maintain physical fitness (I can sort of check this off by the whole "yoga" thing, but I'd like to start cycling too).
3. Smile more.
4. Make the people I meet in life glad that they met me.
5. Figure out what will make me professionally happy.
6. Write more. Write poems, love songs, essays, who cares, just something.
7. Socially interact with my husband's family so that they don't think I'm a mute imp.
8. Run harder.
9. Eat five fruits or vegetables a day.
10. Drink enough water to float a boat.

There. Now it's public. All I need to do is live up to it.