Why I Don’t Make Resolutions

Someone called and asked what I was doing to ring in the new year tonight. “Going to bed early!” was my response. Despite staying up to “watch the ball drop” over several New Year’s Eves, I have never enjoyed the hoopla. That stuff just bores me. And now that my kids are grown, I enjoy the luxury of naps and going to bed early!One year I went through the motions of making a list of “resolutions” but it just all seemed silly to me. I prefer to live in the here and now. I don’t dwell on the past (in fact, my memory of past events is VERY short) and I don’t live in the future where something “might” happen. I just tend to take today for what it is. If I find a problem or an obstacle, I deal with it today. I don’t forget about it and banish it to the past, and I don’t put it off until tomorrow. I deal with it until it’s done and move on.

This is not how I have always lived. I’m a firstborn and, until we had kids, I was the stereotypical Type A personality. Having a large family has taught me how to live in the now. Kids don’t let you wait until tomorrow, they are perpetually in the moment. Kids don’t care what you have planned, if they have a need, that’s all that matters. That’s all they know. And so I’ve learned to make all plans “loosely” with the knowledge that at any given time, a snowstorm or a crisis or a lost shoe could change every plan for the day. And no matter how much I disliked having my plans interrupted, there was nothing I could do about it.  I could either roll with it or live in perpetual frustration. When you have nine kids, you spend 20+ years with that “live in the moment” mindset. It just grows on you.

So if you wonder why I don’t make new year’s resolutions, chalk it up to the insanity of motherhood.