To Resolve, or Not To Resolve? That is the Question

In early January every year, most of us ask ourselves the same question: To resolve, or not to resolve? But what's the point of making New Year's resolutions when most of us fail to keep them?  In fact, there may be more truth in fiction than there is in New Year's resolutions.

According to USA.gov, the most popular New Year's resolutions are unsurprisingly generic.  Lose weight.  Eat healthy.  Lay off the booze.  Work out.  Recycle.  Stop smoking.  Save money.

You get the picture.

I'm not immune to this particular sort of fiction-writing.  Every year I, too, sit down on or around January the 1st and think about what I should do differently in the coming year.  Last year, it was to lose the baby weight and be a more patient mother.  Yet here I am, another year later, still carrying a bit of the baby blubber and probably less patient than I've ever been. 

Resolutions just never seem to work.  Should I just resolve not to resolve this year?  Something just feels...wrong...about that.  What's a New Year's without resolutions?  Even if we don't make them happen, it's important to start the year off hopeful, right?  Wouldn't it be worse if we started each year more downtrodden than the last?

Of course it would.  So then, maybe New Year's resolutions, fictitious or not, have their place in our society after all.  They certainly have their place in me.  This year, I will again resolve to finally lose that baby weight, to finally become a more patient mother, and maybe even to be nicer to the loving man I call my husband. And this year, I'll even throw in something easier to achieve.

This year, I'm looking for an agent.  Notice I used the word looking, not finding--I'm sure it'd be vastly easier to be nicer to my husband, and even to lose the last 5 pounds, than it would to actually get an agent to represent me.  But I can look.  And I can try.  And maybe I'll get rejected a lot this year.  No, I'll definitely get rejected a lot this year.  But I'll also learn a lot, that's for sure.  And isn't that really the point?  I'm in a place of hope, and I have a long journey ahead of me to a destination I may never reach, but if I can gain something just in the journey, then maybe I've already succeeded.

Who knows?  Maybe this year I'll actually keep a New Year's resolution, and use it to build an even better one next year.

What will you resolve to do this year?

Happy 2012, from Fictiffous!

TJ