The Good Witch has asked me to join her in fulfilling a series of New Year’s Resolutions. She came across this article from realbuzz.com and thought it would be fun if we gave it a go. “We” because she knew this isn’t the kind of list you tackle alone. It’s more fun with a partner.
The Realbuzz Team came up with “10 Unusual New Year’s Resolutions.” Honestly, that’s who is listed as the author of the piece: the Realbuzz Team. This means, one person did most of the writing, but four of others threw out some suggestions and demanded credit. Or so I imagine.
Broken down to the basics, the list reads like this:
Do something nice for others every day. My favorite of their recommendations, so I bumped it up the list. They listed things in their order, I’ll go in mine.
Being nice is a lovely idea. Feels even lovelier for this particular year, doesn’t it? Can I stick with niceness for 365 days in a row? The Good Witch knows it would be a struggle. Even if I managed to do it, at some point, niceness would feel like a chore. It shouldn’t be a chore.
Try a new food each week. If you’ve wondered through these blogs at all, you’re aware of how much I hate spending time in my kitchen. If the coffee maker wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be, either. I don’t need a new food each week. God created pizza.
Break a record. Either a personal record (something like, “This is the most hot dogs I’ve eaten in a day!”) or a world record (their idea? Go for the fastest mile ever while running in swim fins). I would have loved either idea at 16. I’m not 16 any longer.
Get your photo taken in five interesting places. That’s a straight-out “Absolutely not!” for me. With the pandemic still raging? I’ve had to travel by plane twice recently and would rather not do it again for many, many months.
It stings because there’s one country in particular that I’ve been dying to see. I just don’t want to see it and die.
Learn a party trick. Team Realbuzz offered a couple of suggestions here, neither of which appealed to me. Contort myself? Again, maybe if I was a teenager. Learn how to recite the alphabet backwards in less than 10 seconds? I could do this. takes me 6 seconds to run through the alphabet in the correct order—I timed it. I’d have gone faster if I didn’t slip into doing the alphabet in a singsong voice—so 10 seconds to flip the order sounds doable.
There are two problems with this, though. One, with my memory, it’s going to take time to learn this party trick. Is this party trick worth the time I give it? Second, the Good Witch will want to try the backwards alphabet trick, too. Since we attend many of the same parties, I’ll become the “not as good backwards alphabet woman.” That sounds awful.
Make a new friend a month. Not acquaintances, but real friends? I’m lucky to make a friend once every five years. And I count myself lucky when it happens.
Develop a good relationship with your body. My body and I get along just fine. As long as I do as it tells me—no caffeine, limited sugar, go big on the fruits & veg—it doesn’t punish me too harshly. Yes, I know, there’s a real S&M vibe there.
Learn something you never learned as a child. The Team suggests learning a handstand or riding a bike. As an alternative, learn how to correctly spell a word that you never quite got right when you were young. I used to do handstands and ride bikes, but I’ve always had trouble with the word, “embarrass.” It’s those two r’s, those two s’s, they trip me up. I only got it right today because of Spellcheck. But what if I never learned how to write the word without Spellcheck? How embarasing.
Make the usual the unusual. By now, the Realbuzz people are struggling to get to 10 items on the list. They suggest I eat fancy chocolates and then wash them down with champagne. There’s not one piece of that sentence that’s any part of my life.
Sort out a financial worry. Because of realbuzz.com, I spend too much money on eating fancy chocolates that I then wash down with champagne. Let me start there.
I wished the Good Witch well with this ambitious agenda, and she immediately decided to go for something else. (If you must know, she is limiting her contact with the Bad Witch to once a month. Once every two weeks. No more than once a week. Which is a very good idea.) I went for something more achievable. Three things, actually.
Resolution #1: Put The Awful, Terrible NO GOOD Mail-Order Bride into book form. I’ll leave the chapters on Vella, too, even after I do. No one reads the story on Vella, as I hope you know, but Amazon keeps sending us monthly bonus money, anyway. It’s like we have our own wealthy, but befuddled, grandmother sending us birthday checks every 30 days. We’ve always had luck publishing books in February, so that’s my target.
Resolution #2: Complete these blogs. I promised to write a blog a week for one year and I’m almost there. This is Blog #50.
Resolution #3: Change my author’s picture on Amazon Central. I haven’t had blonde hair for a while, to my life partner’s regret, and the photo needs an update.
I don’t like how I look in pictures, never have. I think I may have found a solution to this. The image above came from a cellphone app known as Sketch Editor. There are several similar apps, like Sketch Master, Sketch Drawing, Pencil Sketch, but this was the first one I found, so I used it.
You can see from the drawing that the app struggles with shadows—what’s going on with the top of my head, anyway?—but the bags under my eyes, the wrinkles, the unsightly bits all got penciled away. Pencil-me looks better than real me has looked in ages.
Harrell says this is a cheat. I say, life can use a few cheats.
The topic remains under discussion.
The Realbuzz Team came up with “10 Unusual New Year’s Resolutions.” Honestly, that’s who is listed as the author of the piece: the Realbuzz Team. This means, one person did most of the writing, but four of others threw out some suggestions and demanded credit. Or so I imagine.
Broken down to the basics, the list reads like this:
Do something nice for others every day. My favorite of their recommendations, so I bumped it up the list. They listed things in their order, I’ll go in mine.
Being nice is a lovely idea. Feels even lovelier for this particular year, doesn’t it? Can I stick with niceness for 365 days in a row? The Good Witch knows it would be a struggle. Even if I managed to do it, at some point, niceness would feel like a chore. It shouldn’t be a chore.
Try a new food each week. If you’ve wondered through these blogs at all, you’re aware of how much I hate spending time in my kitchen. If the coffee maker wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be, either. I don’t need a new food each week. God created pizza.
Break a record. Either a personal record (something like, “This is the most hot dogs I’ve eaten in a day!”) or a world record (their idea? Go for the fastest mile ever while running in swim fins). I would have loved either idea at 16. I’m not 16 any longer.
Get your photo taken in five interesting places. That’s a straight-out “Absolutely not!” for me. With the pandemic still raging? I’ve had to travel by plane twice recently and would rather not do it again for many, many months.
It stings because there’s one country in particular that I’ve been dying to see. I just don’t want to see it and die.
Learn a party trick. Team Realbuzz offered a couple of suggestions here, neither of which appealed to me. Contort myself? Again, maybe if I was a teenager. Learn how to recite the alphabet backwards in less than 10 seconds? I could do this. takes me 6 seconds to run through the alphabet in the correct order—I timed it. I’d have gone faster if I didn’t slip into doing the alphabet in a singsong voice—so 10 seconds to flip the order sounds doable.
There are two problems with this, though. One, with my memory, it’s going to take time to learn this party trick. Is this party trick worth the time I give it? Second, the Good Witch will want to try the backwards alphabet trick, too. Since we attend many of the same parties, I’ll become the “not as good backwards alphabet woman.” That sounds awful.
Make a new friend a month. Not acquaintances, but real friends? I’m lucky to make a friend once every five years. And I count myself lucky when it happens.
Develop a good relationship with your body. My body and I get along just fine. As long as I do as it tells me—no caffeine, limited sugar, go big on the fruits & veg—it doesn’t punish me too harshly. Yes, I know, there’s a real S&M vibe there.
Learn something you never learned as a child. The Team suggests learning a handstand or riding a bike. As an alternative, learn how to correctly spell a word that you never quite got right when you were young. I used to do handstands and ride bikes, but I’ve always had trouble with the word, “embarrass.” It’s those two r’s, those two s’s, they trip me up. I only got it right today because of Spellcheck. But what if I never learned how to write the word without Spellcheck? How embarasing.
Make the usual the unusual. By now, the Realbuzz people are struggling to get to 10 items on the list. They suggest I eat fancy chocolates and then wash them down with champagne. There’s not one piece of that sentence that’s any part of my life.
Sort out a financial worry. Because of realbuzz.com, I spend too much money on eating fancy chocolates that I then wash down with champagne. Let me start there.
I wished the Good Witch well with this ambitious agenda, and she immediately decided to go for something else. (If you must know, she is limiting her contact with the Bad Witch to once a month. Once every two weeks. No more than once a week. Which is a very good idea.) I went for something more achievable. Three things, actually.
Resolution #1: Put The Awful, Terrible NO GOOD Mail-Order Bride into book form. I’ll leave the chapters on Vella, too, even after I do. No one reads the story on Vella, as I hope you know, but Amazon keeps sending us monthly bonus money, anyway. It’s like we have our own wealthy, but befuddled, grandmother sending us birthday checks every 30 days. We’ve always had luck publishing books in February, so that’s my target.
Resolution #2: Complete these blogs. I promised to write a blog a week for one year and I’m almost there. This is Blog #50.
Resolution #3: Change my author’s picture on Amazon Central. I haven’t had blonde hair for a while, to my life partner’s regret, and the photo needs an update.
I don’t like how I look in pictures, never have. I think I may have found a solution to this. The image above came from a cellphone app known as Sketch Editor. There are several similar apps, like Sketch Master, Sketch Drawing, Pencil Sketch, but this was the first one I found, so I used it.
You can see from the drawing that the app struggles with shadows—what’s going on with the top of my head, anyway?—but the bags under my eyes, the wrinkles, the unsightly bits all got penciled away. Pencil-me looks better than real me has looked in ages.
Harrell says this is a cheat. I say, life can use a few cheats.
The topic remains under discussion.
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