A Very Special 2012

It’s New Years Resolution time! Time for everyone to join gyms and online dating services, only to drop out by February. Time to think about how to spiritually and socially awaken yourself, only to fall asleep halfway through An Inconvenient Truth. The problem with resolutions is that we expect to change so fast, but people don’t change fast, that’s just reality, and in order to change one little thing about your life in a way that sticks, you have to be really committed to changing everything. So, we could try that, OR we could think smaller.  I’m not aiming to climb any mountains this year (except maybe for Resolution #2). These are things that I actually think I can do. As you read through these, ask yourself, "what could I accomplish this year?"

Resolution #1: Only wear yoga pants

My weight, like most women's, fluctuates. But mine seems to change drastically on a weekly basis. If I eat a bagel, I go up a size. If I have one day where I’m busy and don’t eat much, I drop an entire size.  A few months ago, I accepted the fact that I was probably a 12 and would never be an 8 again, but then as soon as I gave my nice, smaller pants to Goodwill, my size 10 pants became too big. I was glad to lose some fatness, but WTF?! I am sick of buying new pants and giving pants away and hoarding pants because I may gain or lose a size at any given moment. The only solution is ELASTIC WAISTBAND PANTS.

Victoria’s Secret sells great Yoga pants that can sort of pass as dress pants. We can see how long I can push this “sort of,”  and until someone tells me I look like a scrub, this is what I’m wearing the majority of the week. I guess I’ve started this resolution early, because I haven’t worn real pants since Christmas, and I’m wearing yoga pants right now.

Resolution #2: Finish draft three of my novel (the “finished” draft).

I don’t want to say too much about this because I had a teacher once who said, “don’t talk about it! Just write it! If you talk about it, it will ruin it and you’ll never actually do it!” At first I thought he was being lazy and didn’t want to talk about my work, but then I realized that he was right. The last person I talked to in detail about my novel was my dad. After I told him how excited I was about this project, he said, “Well, that’s great. I just want you to be happy. I’d like you to find a nice man.” Should I say what I think of that response? No, I shouldn’t talk about that either. All I want to say is that I need to finish it. There must be more than this provincial life.

Resolution #3: Drink more alcohol.

Does this make sense to you? I’m kind of an anxious, paranoid person, yet I am constantly filling my body up with caffeine. Isn’t your brain chemistry actually altered if you keep putting certain chemicals in it? Am I just making myself more insane than I already am? Shouldn’t I be filling up with a sedative instead? I’m not really an alcohol person, although I do enjoy a fine wine. I need to drink wine at least once a week, and especially right before I teach my classes (kidding, obviously…or am I?)

Going along with those ideas…

Resolution #4: Become more shallow/think less

You know how you see terrible things happen on the news and you’re like, “That’s so sad, but it will never happen to me”? I’m the opposite. I expect it to happen to me. It’s just a matter of time before someone who I THINK is my neighbor knocks on my door, says something like, “Can I use your phone? My silly wife locked me out by mistake!” I say, “Sure, come on in!” Then BOOM! I’m knocked out, drug back to his house, locked in the basement for months, eating only rats, before he finally murders me, chops up my body and feeds it to the search party, calling it “chili” (yes, that was an episode of one of those crime shows I don’t let myself watch). Some strange part of me feels that if I hear enough stories about these things, I’ll figure out how to keep them from happening to me, or I’ll figure out how to outsmart my captor, but I always come to the conclusion that in those situations, there’s not much you can do; I would just shit myself and die. So it’s probably better just not to think about it.

One simple thing I can do is switch my evening television watching; I’m not allowed to watch HLN (which should really just be called the “Women and Children are Getting Murdered All Around You channel”) and spend more time watching HSN where a lady with fake eyebrows holds up a beaded bracelet with a giant, glittery Santa face in the middle of it and says, “Isn’t this just EXQUISITE? Look at the fine craftsmanship. These will be all the rage this holiday.” I bet that woman NEVER thinks about murder, or about anything for that matter. I should be more like her.

(If things like this happened every time I watched HSN, it would only be a plus.)

Resolution #5: Get better songs on my iPod.

I bought my iPod for myself as a graduation present when I finished my bachelors. On the back, I had the fine people at Apple engrave the words “Congrats, Brigette! Love, Brigette.” It is near and dear, but abused; music has come and gone in the last 5 or 6 years, but not much has changed. There are songs that I continually skip over, yet for whatever reason, I don’t have the heart to delete. Because what if at some point, I REALLY want to listen to:

Automatic, by the Pointer Sisters? Dive, by Stephen Curtis Chapman? Eyes Without a Face, by Billy Idol? Underground, by David Bowie (Labyrinth!) Or I Wish, by Skeelo? Don’t tell me you don’t remember that one! Or the entire Black Eyed Peas album, Monkey Business? I periodically try to get rid of these and I periodically fail. There is no room for anything new or good. I thought I was stronger than this. I will be stronger in the new year.

(You know you wouldn't want to delete this either.)

So there you have it: the Brigette of 2012 is going to be a shallow drunk in elastic waistband pants, writing the five millionth page of her secretive novel, sobbing as she deletes “Pump It” from her iPod so there’s room for Adele. Just picture that for a moment.

Now it’s your turn. Tell me your resolutions. Paint me a glorious picture.