High Resolution?

Dearest Bloggity

I hope this finds you doing well. It is my sincerest desire to have delivered it before the strike of midnight when the calendar turns over to its newest version. A version that will give us a leap day and a Presidential election. This makes it somewhat ironic that on this eve of 2012 I find myself sitting in Iowa just four days before the Presidential caucuses.

Iowa, a state where the locals, bored out of their minds because the only thing they can see is corn, have decided to spice up their lives with full contact politics. It appears that for the caucus you and your neighbors (some of them who hold grudges) all gather in a room, and like that old summer camp icebreaker game, everyone puts on a blindfold and makes animal noises so that all of the like animals congregate in a group. Someone counts noses and if a majority is reached that horse wins. If not, they debate with the grudge holding neighbors face to face and try to get the weaker willed ones to change from say a elephant to an ass. No sanctity of the voting booth here. I am for you or against you and I have to have enough guts to say it.

The Iowans really believe that they are doing the rest of the United States a favor by this bully political system. By providing their insight so early, they are able to help a candidate build momentum that will carry them to their party nomination and possibly the White House. In actuality though, the Iowa caucuses only get it right about half the time. That's right. They pick the eventual party nominee wrong as often as they pick it right; providing more evidence that politics is the art of the possible not the science of what is.

I mentioned above that I hoped to get this blog to you by midnight two (strike that) three days ago. My first New Years Resolution busted before it even got out of the chute. My hell bound road was paved with the combined celebration of a niece's wedding in caucusing Iowa, and ringing-in the New Year in the central time zone. Sad to say, I got a little cranky because my internal clock did not adjust to the facts on the ground. Then there was the nine hour dash home with 35 mph winds. Thankfully, they were blowing us home.

I used to think that all resolutions made with the baby new year were often futile and nearly always broken. In a desire to buck this disturbing and frankly depressing trait of resolution setting, I went through a phase where I would try to make unbreakable resolutions. I resolve to eat at least three times a day for 99% of the days in this up coming year. Failing that, I resolve to be irritable and grouchy. I resolve to get out of bed at least once a day. Failing that, I resolve to call in a sick day with my best froggy voice. I resolve to breathe for the next 365 days. Failing that, I resolve to die. I had discovered that the two keys to successful resolution setting are 1) make them reasonable and 2) have a back up plan.  

Is that a cop-out? Not really. You see after a few successful years resolving to do the little things, I became much more bold in my resolutions, and more often than not they came true. You can imagine my delight when I found the following list of resolutions that I penned last January and the remarkable success that I had.

1) I resolve to write the blog 50 times in the next year. Check.

2) I resolve to fall in love with riding a bike again and in the course of riding 1800 miles lose the equivalent of a large toddler in weight. Check.

3) I resolve to let my child go on wild adventures even if it takes her to Ghana, and with my wife's support, get through it while rarely wishing that I had a cruise missile as a deterrent. Check.

4) I resolve to let my other child go on a long, long journey that has him finding a life's calling as a teacher, and in the discovery, a love for learning his future craft. Check.

5) I resolve to love my wife in this empty nest phase of our life much better. Check.

Amazing you say? How did you successfully resolve to do all of those things Roger? I didn't. Hindsight is 1080p HD. Life keeps changing. I have found that it easier and more blessed to let the change come and revel in it than to resolve to change it.

Take care.

Roger