On New Year’s Resolutions
By Glenda Winders
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. —When the ball dropped at midnight, I was still hard at work on my New Year’s resolutions. The issue is that I take these annual self-improvement aspirations much too seriously. While others discontinue their gym memberships at the beginning of February, I’m still slogging it out until the end of December.
And here’s another problem: By the time you reach a certain age, you’ve done it all. I have lost weight and exercise daily, I drink the prescribed amount of water for my size, floss my teeth and stick to a budget. My house is decluttered to a point that it almost looks as if no one lives here.
How hard can we work, how good can we be before we can stop feeling guilty for sitting down to do something we truly want to do?
Books on the shelf in my office attest to the degree of passion with which I come to this industry. Volumes on how to meditate, organize, save time, be more productive and have a healthier body bear witness to my zealotry.
This mania probably started when I was a child and my holiday-loving mother explained what New Year’s resolutions were and suggested that I make some. It came into full flower when I became an adult and started keeping a journal, a practice that also has its roots in my far-away past.
I was a young wife and mother when my elderly next-door neighbor passed, and the real estate agent who was tasked by her children with selling her home asked me if I’d like to take a tour. I had only been inside as far as her foyer, so I had no idea what other interesting nooks made up her fading Edwardian home, and I was frankly curious. Before the agent could even finish speaking, I had already blurted out, “Sure!”
What I discovered were opulent spaces containing parquet floors, exquisite furniture and rugs, antique china, elegant dresses and crystal perfume bottles on a shiny gold tray. But what fascinated me most was an entire bookshelf filled with identical small black spiral notebooks in a second-story room.
“What’s that?” I asked my tour guide.
“Diaries,” she said. “She kept the same book every year from the day she got married. They’re full of comments about the people she knew, where she and her husband traveled, what she served when they entertained — that kind of thing.”
We moved on, but a light bulb had switched on in my head. What a concept — to record your life, to know 30 years from now exactly what you did today. That afternoon I went to an office supply store and bought the same kind of diary — actually an appointment calendar, but it serves the purpose.
That was several years ago, and now I’m on the way to having my own shelves filled with what I call “journals.” I write one page at the end of each day, finishing with a “high” — the best or most memorable thing that happened during the previous 24 hours. As I predicted, it’s fun to turn back 10 years and see what was going on. It’s also useful for more practical reasons. Want to know what day you took the car in for service or when the relatives visited? It’s all right there.
Her resolution for 2025 is to be the kindest version of herself and to spread love, sunshine and optimism to everyone she meets.
The blank pages at the back of the journal are where I list the books I read throughout the year and record my resolutions each New Year’s Eve. A year from now I’ll know where to find them so that I can check my progress. And because I know I will do my level best to fulfill them, I give them what is probably an excessive amount of thought.
A few years ago, the practice of selecting a word for the year became popular, and I liked that idea. The first year I chose “calm” and the second “quiet.” (Do you see a pattern forming here?) I even took an online art class in which I designed a journal page around this idea. But still I couldn’t resist the temptation to make a list of the steps I would take to achieve these qualities and that turned into more things to do.
With this in mind, I read a column by Melissa Kirsch in The New York Times titled “Satisfying vs. Productive.” She was writing about planning weekends, but the questions she posed and the answers she considered resonated with my thinking. Essentially she was making the same argument I was. How hard can we work, how good can we be before we’ve made it — before we can stop feeling guilty for sitting down to do something we truly want to do? The Sisyphean list, she observes, is never going away. As soon as one chore disappears, we pencil in three more. Waiting to be completely free of work to take part in pleasure is an exercise in futility.
So this year my plan is to incorporate all of the past strategies into one. My word for the year will be “balance.” Because I love the work I do here and in other parts of my writing life, it is often difficult to draw a line between work and pure fun. But the one treasured pastime that I always neglect is playing the piano. As Kirsch proposes, my to-do list each day will now include at least a half-hour of playing, which I can later cross off as an accomplishment.
Then, just as I was congratulating myself on this decision, I had a chat with a nurse at my doctor’s office. The recent election didn’t go as she had hoped, but she plans to turn that reality into a positive. Her resolution for 2025 and beyond is to be the kindest version of herself and to spread love, sunshine and optimism to everyone she meets.
Her simple but profound solution put my many years of overthinking into perspective and made me feel a little bit foolish. I’m excited at the idea of promising myself some piano time every day, but I’m also going to take a page from Danielle’s playbook. Whatever your other resolutions, I hope you will, too.
Happy New Year from everyone at Napa Valley Features.
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Glenda Winders is a novelist, freelance writer and copy editor for Napa Valley Features.
What a wonderful story about kindness. Thank you. Uncle Norm
What a life-affirming and joyous outlook!