My New Year’s Resolutions (May Contain Trump)

Sorry, this is going to be really self-indulgent. I mean, who fills up a blog with their New Year’s resolutions as though anybody cares?

Resolutions:

1. Stop apologizing for being self-indulgent. Especially about my own blog. (Actually, I should stop apologizing quite so much all around. My friend Teresa pointed it out to me once and I told her I thought I was being kind of charmingly Britishy, like occasionally saying “I reckon” or “that’s rubbish.” But I think she’s right. I reckon it’s probably a way to forestall other people finding fault with me first.)
2. Fight Trumpism. This is different from fighting Trump himself. The bloviating Cheeto has given birth to his hideous progeny, this loose conglomeration of ideals and values, and now it can exist independently from Trump himself. How do I see Trumpism?
   • Valuing personal success over the good of the community
   • Devaluing of constitutional rights
   • Normalization of vicious stereotypes based on ethnicity, religion, and country of origin
   • A self-serving and cynical treatment of facts and of truth-telling
   • Treating women as objects to be viewed, grabbed, used, and cast aside
   • Horrible syntax
   • Adulation of the strong, rich, and powerful
   • Disdain of the weak, poor, and disenfranchised
   • Kleptocracy
   • An unhealthy obsession with the size of one’s hands
3. Exercise.
4. Exorcise. My inner demons, that is, mostly the twins insecurity and perfectionism.
5. Write more. Because FFS, how can I call myself a writer if I don’t write? No more namby-pamby excuses. What I produce may be garbage, but it will be MY garbage.
6. Refuse to allow anybody else to tell me to worry about Thing A instead of Thing B. I am perfectly capable of worrying about climate change and petulant PEOTUS tweets and Hamilton and SNL and fascism and whether the cashier at the grocery store thought my jokes were weird. When it comes to worrying, I contain multitudes.
7. Worry less.
8. Eat more vegetables. Ancillary to this: stop counting No-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup Strawberry-Banana V-8 (“contains one whole serving of vegetables!”) as a serving of vegetables.
9. Get a thicker skin.
10. But not so thick I become hidebound or insensitive.
11. Be a better wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend. (If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of these. Let me know how I can do better, ‘kay?)
12. Be better at asking for forgiveness when I can’t do or be any of the above (like, pretty much always). That includes forgiving myself.

Love to all of you, and I hope you have a joyful, fulfilling, peaceful, and prosperous 2017!