2017 Resolutions I May Very Well Keep

I don’t do resolutions. Wait, I take that back. I don’t “keep” resolutions. They’re all a bunch of the same ol’ same ol’ anyway, so much so they’re virtually cliche now. You know, ones like “I’m going to get healthy and lose 30 pounds!” (Good luck keeping it off because good food is food that must be eaten, not merely drooled over) or “I vow to be a much more considerate individual” (which really means “I will tip any Starbucks employees who offer me a smile with my nonfat soy chai latte”) or “I am going to put away more money in my retirement account” (until the car breaks down, the house is sucked into a sinkhole leading into hell, the hospital stay turns into a week-long break, etc.). None of it sticks with me, and it sort of has something to do with the fact that any sense of commitment doesn’t bode well for a number of us in my family.

Still, there are things I feel I have to do, so I figured if I claimed they were “resolutions” of the New Year’s variety, I could formalize them somewhat on the page.

For 2017, I intend to…

…see the new Blade Runner and Alien movies as soon as they hit the screens, and for god’s sake, don’t compare them to their old source material like other annoying movie fanatics tend to do. (I didn’t do that with Mad Max: Fury Road because I had faith it would be good. And, hey, I was right! It’s good to be right.)

(I know the teaser doesn’t show much of anything, but the Hardware vibe and the music alone made me pee a little. Such excitement. Such thrilling-ness.)

(One word: Fassbender)

…keep encouraging writers I meet to follow whichever publishing avenue they so choose. The back-and-forth arguments between those pro-traditional publishing and those pro-indie publishing have grown stale. Both methods have their advantages and their problem areas. I went traditional due to my own personal reasons and goals, but I’ve done enough research to know that it wouldn’t matter which way I went — trad or self — because I’d still have to do most of my marketing since I’m not a household name (or a name that people cringe when they pronounce like Milo Yiannopolous).

…keep hunting for a better way to grade hundreds of papers quickly and efficiently and still give decent feedback. This quest has been happening for 16 years now, and I fear it’s a lost cause… like the search for the holy grail…the holy grail of grading secrets.

…encourage failure so that my millennial students learn to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and keep at it rather than cry in my office or (worse) the classroom about it. Last term, I had to comfort only one crier, but spring often brings a lot more, and I can’t take the weeping, not when I have plenty of my own weeping to do as well.

…work with my GP to find out the root cause of whatever it is that’s been waking me up at night, having me feel akin to John Hurt’s character in Alien (yes, I’ve just noticed the unnecessary theme here). It could be hypertension, but I believe there’s something else there, something physical, unrelated to my heart, and it terrifies me. I’m racking up the hospital bills after three ER visits in three years. This past time, mere days ago, I was even admitted for a day to have a stress test, EKG, and heart ultrasound. I now officially know that I definitely don’t have a heart problem.

(I swear, it must be an endoparastic xenomorph there, living inside of me, but no one can find a damned thing.)

…pay most of my bills on time for a change. (That doesn’t include the new hospital bills I have accrued, undoubtedly coming my way very very soon. It was the first time I’ve ever been actually admitted to a hospital before, so I’ve no idea what’s going to happen or how much I’ll be in debt.)

…oh, and finish the goddamn second book. I need a creative writing nag, someone who presses me every week to KEEP AT IT, no matter the workload.

How about you? Yes, you. Do you have any resolutions that are things you have to do, not promises you’ll know you simply won’t keep?

In response to the Daily Prompt Year

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