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Happy New Year!

The New Year looms around the corner and it's at this time that I look back at the past 12 months to reflect on my life, and ahead, to decide what to improve in the future. I do this every year, and while I have good intentions, I pretty much break every New Year's resolution. I have to ask myself why I set resolutions and why I then proceed to break them.

I'm a reflective perfectionist so it is my nature to obsess about what I did wrong and how to fix it. I recently read in (the scholarly journal) Real Simple about rumination- when one fixates on something very small, stresses out about it and makes it a bigger deal than it really is. Well, my middle name might as well be Ruminate. I am so good at it! Since I'm also very moody and sensitive, I strive to make every interaction, with every person I encounter, perfect. To err is human, and I'm often a big mouth fool so 2/3 of the time, I screw up and then I feel terrible for like, um, a year, or longer. Setting goals is a way for me to put a positive spin on my foolishness and to appease my rumination. So, I screwed up royally on that, with that person, because I did x, y, z this year, but there's always next year! I can do better, with everything, during the next twelve months.

And this is the answer, my friends, to the second part of my question. Why do I break the promises I set for myself? Because I am not perfect. I don't fail because I set unrealistic goals for myself. I don't fail because I'm lazy or afraid. I don't keep all of my promises, or accomplish all of my goals, because I get distracted. With each new day of the new year comes another blunder another flub and another reason to try harder the next day, the next month and the next year. It's hard, in January, to know what I'll need to fix by November.

Now,now, I'm not looking for reasons for you to email or FB message me to tell me that I'm not as much of a fool as I make myself out to be or that I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I don't mean to be my own harsh critic. I'm pretty sure you may feel this way about your own resolution setting process. Or maybe you do think I'm a fool and you meet all of your yearly goals. Well, good for you and mea culpa for me.

Let's get on with the show! Please enjoy this list of New Year's resolutions that I will not accomplish (at least not intentionally) by this time next year!
1. drink more water
2. cook more real food for myself and my family
3. stress less about driving in the snow
4. do more yoga
5. run in a road race of significant distance
6. wear more sunblock
7. spend less time on facebook
8. get published
9. get my scrapbooking up-to-date
10. lay on a beach in a bikini

There they are. Some very superficial goals that really don't reflect the true improvements I need to make this year but just maybe I can check a few of these off my list while I go about my day as a bumbling, average erring human. Happy Holidays, New Year and goal setting to all of my readers!

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