A Resolution

My birthday came and went, and then Christmas, and, finally, 2008 closed with a whimper. Or maybe that was me whimpering, I can’t be sure. By most accounts, 2008 wasn’t all that great a year. Our domestic problems have seeped out into international channels and things are looking as if they will get a whole lot worse before they get any better. But I am no economist, and my foreign relations ability is admittedly surpassed by any high school junior with a B or better in Global Studies. So that’s all I’ll say about that.

Instead, I think I’ll address something much more frivolous: The New Year Resolution.

Over on my Facebook page, my January 3rd (ish) status cracked that I had already broken 90% of my resolutions. And while it may not be entirely accurate for 2009, there have certainly been times where they fell by the wayside that fast (or faster, in the event of the numerous “I vow to quit smoking” manifestos I declared over the years). This year, however, I only made one resolution, and I do, indeed, vow to keep it. I actually think it will be, if not easy, then at the very least convenient, but more on that a little later.

I used to take the whole Resolution thing much more serious than I do now. I even formed resolution groups, and together we made lists and support channels in an effort to keep our silly little vows. Vows like:

1- I will lose/gain/rearrange weight
2- I will quit/cut back smoking
3- I will/won’t do some other thing that is really really good/bad for me

In and of themselves, these are all really important promises. Smoking, specifically, was on my various lists for probably 20 years before I finally managed to kick the habit (without promising a damn thing to anyone, not even myself). Tying them together is simply inviting failure not just for one of them, but for ALL of them. By lumping them all together they in essence become a single thing. Slipping up on one equates to slipping up on all of them, and totally blowing one gives you the mental excuse/justification that they are now all blown. Big huge things like this need to be tackled singly.

This is the first year since I moved back to Rochester that I actually have made a resolution. For some time now, I have been trying to cut back on my dependence upon technology (he says with a wry grin as he cuts and pastes text from an OpenOffice document to a WordPress blog running on a private server with his own domain name). As a writer, I am pretty much tied to my computer, but I still takes certain steps to get away from it each and every day. The obvious first step was to spend a minimum of two hours reading each day. Most often I read in the evening before bed, but I am also starting to work in a reading break in the afternoon and I am finding that it recharges me for the evening hours.

My next step, beginning this week, is to start writing letters. You know, actual letters with stamps. I won’t be writing a ton of them, maybe one a week or every other week to start, and I’ll see how it goes from there. I find I tend to slow my thinking down and focus more when I write long hand. Even now, as I type this, I am thinking not just a few words ahead, but a sentence, even two sentences ahead to where this whole thing will lead. How much longer will it be? I answered that before I started typing “Even now, as I type this” a couple sentences back (the answer, by the way, is too long). My hopes for this little resolution are these:

Hope #1: Due to years at the keyboard, my handwriting has deteriorated to the point of near illegibility. Hopefully some dedicated practice will help me get it back to its former sloppiness.

Hope #2: A slower pace of thought will lead to much more precise writing not only in the letters, but in my fiction. My first drafts tend to ramble and wander until they find themselves and I would love to rein that tendency in much earlier in my writing process.

Hope #3: Get myself away from the computer for an hour or so. There’s both a coffee shop and a bar right across the street. I could sit, enjoy a beverage of my choice, write a letter, and perhaps even meet someone interesting.

Hope #4: Maybe, just maybe my effort will lead to the recipient stepping away from the bustle of their day and relax for a minute or 5 and read. Maybe even take another twenty minutes and write a letter back.

That last one is, to me, the most attractive. We all have so much information bombarding us every single day, I think we could all use a moment like that. Where everything just kind of slips away and we are focused not just on a single thing, but on a single person, with an intimacy that you just can’t get with an email or text message or even a phone call.

So there you have it. My resolution. Hopefully I’ll stick to it, and one of these days you, yes you, may enjoy a real letter from me. And won’t that be something to tell the grandkids?