The Yearly Dilemma

I don’t make goals. I don’t know what I would work for, and the danger that I would fail to meet them is too great. If you don’t try, you don’t fail. Better to have not loved at all than to have loved and lost, right? I am much too impatient to have long-term goals. Long term means that they stay unmet for a long time, which means that I get discouraged or bored or forgetful and give up.

So where does this leave me? I have made a mockery of New Years Resolutions for seven years now; as long as they rhyme then I repeat them regularly for a year, but without any sense of duty or even interest in upholding them.
Brand New 2002: a brand new year with a fresh start…what the crap does that mean?
Date-Free 2003: required literally no effort, just my usual anti-social behavior.
Date More 2004: one date was definitely more than none.
It’s My Life 2005: so back the #@%&* off and let me make my own decisions…again, that attitude didn’t require a noticeable change in me.
Visit Six 2006: yes, I rhymed six with six…the idea was to spend at least one week in six different countries. I had all of this travel planned and booked before the new year even started, so I can’t really call this a goal. And one trip fell through and I had to count the U.S. as one.
Get to Heaven 2007: the old “become a better person” cop out…failed obviously. The result of a rhyming shortage. Narrowly beat out “Eat bread with leaven 2007”.

And now I am faced with the dawn of yet another year and the quest for the perfect rhyme. Given past “goals” and recent conversations with friends, I briefly considered “Go on a date 2008” but that seemed a little ambitious. No need to get carried away in the euphoria of New Years festivities. Just kidding, there were no festivities. I’d spent all day on 31 December lifting heavy and bulky things in and out of trucks and maneuvering them up stairs, around corners, and down narrow hallways, then trying to talk my mother out of over-furnishing every room in her new house. Rather than being Rose’s date to a party that night, I went to bed early.

Sometimes I’m forced to admit that there may be something to this “paying attention to the counsel of Church leaders” thing. I seem to be regularly assaulted by “set goals and work toward them” lectures these days, so the other day I found myself contemplating what I expect and hope for 2008. There I was, skiing through some forested area at Bryce Canyon National Park. We’d set out on a groomed loop, but strayed off through the trees for a little while. It was getting dark and I was completely turned around. I have a lousy sense of direction. I think you all know this. Jordan and I wandered around Oxford for ages looking for a place that we’d walked past long before. And I would have been lost on the London Underground without Bess. (To preserve some dignity, the vain part of me wants to point out that sometimes my sense of direction is very good…just not lately) How embarrassing to spend so much time outdoors, and to have traveled to so many new places and still get turned around so easily! I’ve got to do something about this. In a flash, it came to me…NAVIGATE 2008! I will improve my sense of direction! I’m not sure how…maybe I will carry around a compass. Maybe I just need to spend more time outside; I’m sure that would help. Maybe whenever I go anywhere with any of you guys, you can practice abandoning me in various locations and forcing me to find my way back on my own. That sounds like so much fun.

This is not the real sequence of events and thoughts. I was enjoying the silence and the beautiful landscape; the contrast of the white snow on the red rocks. I was thinking about the last time I had been to Bryce, and things that had happened since. I was frustrated by the feeling that I’ve just been coasting for the past few years. I was physically sick at the thought of repeating statistics. I was tired of a lot of things in my life. But I was also excited about a lot of things. Then I realized that I didn’t know where we were or how to get back to the car and I was in the front of our little line. So, in my usual half-assed but grandiose manner, I arrived at Navigate 2008.

This is the year, guys. I will navigate my life literally and figuratively. This is the year I will really figure out what I’m doing. This is when I will take responsibility for my own life and make important decisions and lots of money. This is the year I will figure out exactly what I want to do in my future and take several significant steps toward it. By the end of 2008, I will be a happy, healthy, graduated, well-adjusted, driven, in-control, smoothly functioning, socially skilled, gainfully employed, attuned to direction, independently wealthy wonder and marvel. Absofrickinlutely.