New Year's resolutions for 2014
Why make resolutions in the first place when they are inevitably broken by mid March? Some of our age-old practices have their roots in superstition, some in religion.One of the strong points of Catholicism, for one, is the ability to start again with a clean slate. I’m not sure if there are ties between resolutions and the Catholic church but it does provide a favorable terrain for self-betterment. So even if they only last for a few months at best, a few months of conscious self-improvement are better than nothing. Ideally we could have resolutions every three months and keep something going all year but that would probably get boring. So here is my list for 2014:
Go bed before midnight. I’d like to blame this problem on electric lighting or technology and the modern age but a concerted effort is probably all that is needed. This was one of last year’s resolutions that quickly fell by the wayside.
Become my own client. The fact that no one pays me for my own work has always been one of the reasons that I come in last when there is work to be done. But shouldn’t it be the opposite? As a freelancer marketing is everything, whether its marketing in a conventional sense or just presenting the best image possible. I’d like to think that the work I do speaks for itself but in a field where one’s work is largely anonymous and people who are qualified to judge it are few and far between, the only way to claim something is to write about it, take pictures of it, explain it, converse about it… I’ve decided not to be an easy client either. I’m going to be the client who is at best begrudgingly satisfied. I’m also the client who will pay the least and expect the most.
30 minutes of exercise per day. Having decided to forgo taking public transportation twice a day and not having anyone who might criticise me for munching and slurping away while I work during the day, I have managed to put on a bit of weight. To make matters worse, I rarely get a chance to wear the uncomfortable business clothes that remind me that a trip to the gym is in order. This one is far from original and is probably the hardest to keep as New Year’s has the decided disadvantage of falling in early winter (for those of us in the northern hemisphere anyway) so there are other factors like cold and lack of sunlight to taint motivation. I think it’s better to keep these lists short and sweet. There is nothing to say they can’t be revisited, or even rewritten, three months from now.