Pick Your Poison

Make up your collective mind. Is this when we look back and catalogue the events of the previous year or the time when we resolve to ameliorate the coming one?

In other words, pick your poison: Top 10 lists or New Year’s resolutions.

Auntie hates them both.

At best they’re meaningless, for the most part they’re fatuous.

Let’s take it chronologically. If we as a culture have devolved to the point where something that happened eleven months ago is historic and we need to be reminded that it happened at all, then that reminder isn’t going to do a damn thing.

Sure, with some analysis and/or insight we could learn and improve, but Top 10 Year In Review lists aren’t about either analysis or insight. They're usually about celebrities. Yay, history!

As for New Year's resolutions, I don't like them mostly because they don't work.

Of course Auntie believes in change and growth and all that hippie-dippy-psychobabble-y goodness. I’m just a skeptic with a decent memory and I don’t remember a New Year’s resolution that took, for anyone.

There’s a reason why you never do, or always stop doing, this stuff. Until you fix that reason, a burst of temporary discipline isn’t going to make a long-term difference.

Oh well. I’ve been slacking since Thanksgiving, just like most of you. And I look forward to catching up and getting back in control, just like some of you. But I make To Do lists, not resolutions.

What’s the difference, you ask? Despite your snarky tone, I’ll tell you what the difference is.

I’ll actually finish a To Do list.