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OPINION: New Year?s resolution off to good startJan 19, 2013 (The Herald (Smithfield - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- I made a New Year's resolution. Not to lose weight, though I need to. Not to eat healthy; I'm much better about that than I used to be. Instead, I made a resolution to try to do at least one creative or constructive thing every day. I didn't make it necessarily easy on myself. I cannot, for example, count things that I would normally do in the course of a day. Which means I cannot count this column as creative, and later this year, after spring has sprung, I can't count mowing the grass as constructive. Still, I have managed to be constructive early in this new year. Among other things, I have carried my hobbled laptop to the shop for repairs, and I have updated the operating system on the desktop computer at home, although that might require more constructive behavior because some things that worked before don't work now. Outside of the workplace, I have found being creative much harder, maybe because my creativity tank is empty after a long day at the office. But being creative is as easy as getting back into the kitchen, where I haven't been since breakfast on Christmas Day. But first, daughter Kristin, my kitchen partner, will have to get a day off from work. I must admit that being constructive requires a stretch of the definition of constructive. I have, for example, given myself credit for reducing the clutter on the kitchen island and for filling the recycling basket with the newspapers that pile up in the bedroom and in my truck. But the alternatives are leaving the clutter on the island and the newspapers scattered here and there, so I like to think I'm doing some good no matter how small. I'm not quite sure of my motivation for my New Year's resolution. Perhaps I'm sensing my mortality and want to make better use of the time I have left. Or maybe I was moved by something I read online as the new year approached. The writer, about my age, said her resolution was simply to be a better person at 53 than she was at 52. In any event, I'm motivated, at least for now, to be constructive and, or creative. Wish me luck. ___ (c)2013 The Herald (Smithfield, N.C.) Visit The Herald (Smithfield, N.C.) at www.theherald-nc.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |