New Year is just around the corner

George: “Isn’t it wonderful? I’m going to jail!”

So this year is nearly done with. It’s been okay. Not great, but okay. If you were to ask me for a highlight though…hard, very hard indeed.

And none of us know what next year is bringing, but if everything that we are hearing in the media is true…well lets just say we won’t dwell on it here. We can reserve that for the sleepless four o’clock in the mornings that most of us have occasionally.

What would life be like if it were worry free? Would we worry about not being worried? Knowing me I probably would.

Perhaps I should make it my New Year’s Resolution not to worry, but then I’d just worry about breaking it.

I’ve broken pretty much every resolution I’ve ever made within hours of making them, but ask me what my strong points are and I’d probably include ‘determined’ and ‘resolute’ – but then I’d also include ‘outgoing’ and ‘cheery’. None of these would be a lie. There are times when I am all of those things and other times when I am none of them. I think most people are like that and it depends a lot on circumstance.

One year I gave up smoking at the last ‘dong’ of midnight, bravely crushing my remaining four Benson and Hedges into a mess of brown tobacco, white paper, and fluffy yellow filter in front of an audience of drunken revellers.

By noon the next day my body was screaming, by two I was looking for a shop (any shop, any price) that was open to buy nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, anything that I could get my hands on, and by ten o’clock the next day I was smoking again. I tried to give up smoking on numerous occasions after that and then five years ago I managed it. Not as a New Years Resolution, but as a result of a really bad bout of flu. It wasn’t easy. I spent eighteen months on nicotine gum, then another year on plain gum, and I have ‘porked-up’ nicely as a result.

Each New Year I toy with the idea of starting smoking again. I’ve resisted it thus far but maybe this year. I’m often tempted. After all I can have a cigarette any time I want, it’s just that I don’t want one right now. I bet it would help me lose weight though.

So with 2009 just around the corner here are some resolutions that I’m toying with:

1. I will stop looking at women who are half my age in a certain way.
2. I will not embellish my stories to make them more interesting. I will simply stick to the facts. However unbelievable and extraordinary they may seem to others.
3. I will stop looking at women who are three-quarters of my age in a certain way.
4. I will not worry as much as I could, or as much as they want me to.
5. I will not put LOL in any texts or mails I send, or use silly emoticons ;o)
6. I will stop looking at women in a certain way.
7. I will not order a ‘Fruit Bat’ at McDonalds or ask the servers not to call me ‘mate’, even though they are not my ‘mate’, will never be my ‘mate’, and should be calling me ‘sir’ and not ‘mate’.
8. I will stop saluting Magpies when I see them as it often causes me to swerve all over the road.
9. I will not expect people to laugh at my hilarious jokes. It isn’t their fault they are humourless morons.
10. I will stop looking at women.

I think it was Eric Zorn who said; “Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle”.

Actually I know it was because I checked. He’s damn right though. In which case maybe I will resolve to do them all.

Get ready to cue the old guy with the sickle and egg timer (no not me).