They all fail. And yet, the way in which I hold off depression when they do, is I just come up with another one, even though I know, even at inception, that the new plans have no better chance than any of the plans I have concocted throughout this life, and possibly others.

But it’s my anti-depressant. And it works, until it doesn’t.

But I came up with an idea today, to make a more sincere resolution, attainable: the New Month’s resolution.

According to Psychology Today, 80% of those who make resolutions to go to the gym stop going by February. Only 43% even make resolutions, so if we include the people who don’t even make them as failures, presuming that they don’t try because they know they’ll fail, and if we assume that the gym resolutions track with other kinds, then 91% fail within a month, 57% of those on day zero.

You can check my math on that, because I might not know what I’m doing, although I got a 98 on the New York State algebra regents’ exam back in 1979.

But it doesn’t matter if I can still do math; we know this tracks from our own experience, even if the numbers are not exact.

People break resolutions.

But, if we make a New Month’s resolution, and make another one the next month, then it might be reasonable to think we can succeed, especially because when we know the commitment is temporary, like a dry January, for example, we might be less likely to become overwhelmed.

I like the idea. Of course, I always like them when I first think of them.

The end of this year marks a year and a half since I retired. I have gotten less done than I wanted to, although I knew it might take some time to get the car up to speed on the ramp to the freedom highway. It’s fine to cut myself that slack at the beginning, but if my life of freedom is to blossom, and because time goes faster as you get older (trust me), I might have to start checking off some boxes and soon.

Like, writing, for example. I am a writer. I can call myself that, if for no other reason than because this is the internet.

So, with regard to that, here is my New Month’s resolution for January.

I hereby resolve, that for the month of January, I will document as many of my political positions as possible on my substack, in case I ever run for office and people need to know, or maybe to convince someone of something, or so I can refer to them, like this: “I’ve thought about that. See link.”

I will be a political pundit, so to speak for the month. You’ll get tired of it, and so will I, because politics can be depressing, but after that, I’ll move on to something else, something creative, perhaps, something imaginative, perhaps. Fiction perhaps, new fiction. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Bottom line, this is something I want to have done, so I will plan to get it done. Mostly done. In a month.

And maybe 2026 will blossom into a year where it becomes less necessary.

One can hope.

Happy New Year!

It reminds me of a supposed quote of Jesus, written down in a relatively recently discovered gnostic text, the book of Thomas (1940s, translated in the 1970s), which consists entirely of Jesus quotes. According to Thomas, Jesus said, “do not lie, and do not do what you hate.”

Allowing for translations, can we stretch “do not do what you hate,” to be on par with “Love everyone?”

Could he have said, “do not be what you hate?” or “do not hate?” or just simply “act out of love?” Is that what Jesus meant?

I can get there.

Dr. Davis, goes on to say that although he’s not certain that he could manage it, he is coming around to the belief that you either love everyone, or no one.

“No halfsies.”

ok, yeah, but….

My father was a Brooklyn Dodger fan and grew up at a time when the Yankees and Dodgers were fierce rivals.

Later, we, as a family, were all Mets fans, a Brooklyn Dodger proxy after their move to Los Angeles. And we were supposed to hate the Yankees.

Hating the Yankees, for me, was even more important than liking the Mets. When I was in the market for a relationship, I wouldn’t care if she hated the Mets, even, but if she liked the Yankees, that was the deal killer. Now, I didn’t, per se, hate Yankee fans, but I couldn’t marry one.

Even now that baseball is dead to me (I don’t like where the game has gone), I still love it when the Yankees lose.

I used to say that I funneled all my hate to the Yankees so that I didn’t have any left for anything else, but, like Mike Davis, I’ve always known that’s not how it works. It was a joke, or maybe wishful thinking, that I could turn hate into something positive.

But you can’t feed hate and expect that it won’t spill over.

Truth is, I don’t really hate the Yankees, because I don’t like how hate feels.

They just make me sick.

And this inhibits me, not, I don’t think, for the obvious reason.

The obvious reason is that it’s hard to be honest and personal. To be “vulnerable,” you have to be invulnerable, so to speak.

But that’s not what holds me back. People probably already know that I am an over-sharer.

And anyway, that would only keep me from writing certain things.

What really inhibits me is that I don’t want to bore people that I know.

I don’t want them to privately be pitying me. Or judging me. Or to suffer secondhand embarrassment.

I worry that the writing won’t be good (and it might not).

People will say, “eh.”

The problem with this thinking is that the main reason I write, I always say this, is for self-knowledge. Not for fame. Not for glory. Not for love (although it would be nice).

I’d like to know if anyone else relates to me, sure, and to connect with them. I’d like to influence opinions, or how someone thinks. But ultimately, I write for me to learn about myself.

But the pressure to post motivates me to dive deeper, to learn more about what I think and to express it better.

They go hand in hand, so it is important that I do post, my best efforts, without regard to whether people will like it.

I’m not making anyone read it.

Maybe much of it will suck.

That just makes me like everyone else who tries

Courageous.

Now it’s been over a year, and I’ve been wanting to reflect upon the state of what I call my new career.

I feel like I don’t have a lot to show for it. But it’s a process.

I had many goals, and I worked on them, little by little, but somehow fell short.

1. I haven’t written much fiction, or poetry even.

2. I have not managed consistency in the way of political activism.

3. Despite practicing Spanish every day, I still can’t have a conversation.

4. I suck at the drums.

5. I’ve only made a small dent in the curation of my 100,000 digital photos

6. Despite 10 months of yoga, I don’t feel like I’m more limber. Maybe if I pulled out a measuring tape, I could see a millimeter or two.

7. I’ve read a few books but not a lot (about one a month).

8. I still feel overwhelmed by all that there is to do, like I always did, though now it is mostly due to self-imposed obligations. Maybe it always was.

9. Joy is elusive. Just joy.

I’m going to stop at 9, because I think top 10 lists are contrived, and 9 is my favorite number.

I continue to work on all of those things, and still do believe, that in time, as long as I don’t give up, I might look back and see significant and surprising results, but it’s hard to stay motivated when you don’t notice it along the way.

Throughout the year, I have reassessed my approach, changed my plan, tried new things, but I start year two, with a more significant change to contemplate.

There is something I have often noted about myself over the course of my life that is important to remember, as I strategize.

I have difficulty changing gears and work more successfully when I obsess about one thing until it’s done. I may not be a natural “jack of all trades,” even though I’m interested in so many things.

I have tried doing easy, less important, tasks first, to get them off my mind. I have tried focusing on the difficult, higher priority tasks first. And then switched back. I slept in when I felt like it, until I decided to set an alarm and get up early. I’ve used checklist apps, and to do lists, and scheduled my time.

I have been afraid that if I didn’t keep a regular routine for any and all tasks, that I would break habits, like when I stopped doing Spanish lessons over some Thanksgiving break, and then forgot to get back to it for a couple of years.

That’s my fear, and it’s founded in history. But it ignores what I have always known about myself, which is that I do much better when I live and breathe one thing I want to be great at. This is one reason why I hated school, changing subjects frequently, and why I would have preferred to BE a writer (or a musician, or whatever – just pick one) and nothing else. It’s why I did better when I changed my major to accounting after I had satisfied all interdisciplinary requirements so that I only needed accounting courses to graduate.

That’s an ADD thing. I’m distracted except with regard to what I can hyperfocus on.

I started my retirement intent on addressing my ADD, something I should have done when I was earning, but that’s moot now. I read all about it and found a therapist. One of her suggestions, which I dismissed at the time, until my daughter suggested the same thing, well, I kind of dismissed it then too, was that I focus on different things on different days, instead of a little bit of everything every day.

I had reasons for not liking the idea.

1. If I didn’t keep something up, I thought I might never do it.

2. Some things (like exercise, Spanish, yoga, music) do need regular attention

3. Some of my tasks (100,000 photos HELLO!) promise to be so time consuming that if I commit to completion, it could be the only thing I do for quite a while.

But.

Here are the downsides of keeping a daily routine.

1. It seems like you’re never making progress, and lacking that sense of accomplishment, makes it harder to stay motivated.

2. I lose time whenever I switch between tasks, and I’ll tend to procrastinate in between. Maybe this is because the hardest thing for me is getting started.

3. I become reticent to go out of town, or commit to anything not already on the list, just for fun, because I am so married to my routines.

So, as I embark on year two – knowing of course that time moves faster as you get older, so, I may need to hurry up and get it right – I’m trying something new. I’m playing to my strengths.

That means:

1. Yes, do the tasks that need regular engagement on a more or less daily basis: exercise, Spanish, yoga, drums, journal writing, meditation, whatever, at least a little bit.

2. But focus more obsessively on one other thing, with an eye towards completion. I was worried that curating my photo collection would consume me? Well, what do I have to show for an entire year when I didn’t let it consume me? I haven’t written consistently. I still suck at the drums. I could be done with the photos already. And I could be feeling pretty good about that.

3. Relieve myself of any sense of obligation to do anything other than that one thing on any given day. Even beyond what the therapist and my daughter suggested, I plan to focus on one project indefinitely, days and days in a row, until I can point to, at least, some significant progress.

4. For the things I have to do daily, that doesn’t mean I won’t also focus more intently on them at times, getting good at the drums for example, to do more than the minimum necessary to go beyond a certain baseline. The regular routine exists to maintain a readiness to leap when the time comes.

5. And finally, since I am no longer worried that interrupting a routine will ruin everything, I can have more fun, travel, take a break, only to return to some one thing when that’s over.

I want to be so engaged with a task, that I forget to procrastinate. I want to be inspired by progress. I want to live in the moment and be the task at hand.

That’s the state of my retirement.

Is it just a plan, like every other new plan I have made over the years to stave off depression, only to call for an even newer plan in short order? Is it a trick I play on myself, like I always have?

Maybe.

Only time will tell.

But I’ve got time, time I’ve never had before, so there’s that reason to think that this time might be different.

Wish me luck.

I just want to make a little progress, but the other day I decided to say to myself that my intention was all of it. Just everything.

And not just with regard to Yoga.

It’s overwhelming. Ever since I retired last July, my intention has been to write. I don’t want to say politics necessarily, but lately all I can think about is society, civilization, fairness.

I’m not happy that so many people voted for Trump. I don’t think they understand what we’re getting into.

I want to change those minds.

But every day there is something new that they throw at us.

It’s not just Trump. It’s not just Republicans. Maybe I’m in a party by myself. I believe in freedom of speech, that it is the prerequisite of every other right, and that the only way to protect our own is to allow bad speech. If you don’t believe that, then you don’t believe in free speech and most don’t, even though they say they do.

Which puts me in a minority, pitted against everyone else.

And that’s my intention. Everything. Everyone.

What else can we do?

I can’t change the world by myself. But everyone needs to speak up. Because the appropriate remedy to bad speech is more speech, not less.