the day after christmas and i am tired but not hung over. my short list for last night included: check out the soundbar’s xmas party, stop by the triple rock for Staraoke and visit a friend & drop off a gift. instead i hung out on my couch in my underwear, watching “iron man” and eating an entire thing of “cherry garcia”.

the day after christmas is one of the most depressing days of the year to me. i don’t know why - it’s not like i really look forward to christmas, so there should be no crash afterward. but it always finds me thinking about new years.. and resolutions.

every year i claim to not make any resolutions, but privately i insert several new “to-do”s into my lists for the year. after reading an article on how “we learn much about ourselves by looking at our new years resolutions” or some such bullsht, i decided to pull up last year’s list and review my failures…

from 2008 (filed under, “become a better person”):

1) volunteer somewhere. this one makes the list every year.. and never happens. this year i did manage to get my company to do some free work for a favorite local charity of mine, Smile Network international but i don’t feel like that counts, since i didn’t have to work very hard to achieve it. i did manage to get around to researching several local volunteer opportunities but that’s it… my conclusion is always the same: “not enough time”. so what can i learn about myself from this one ..i’m a selfish bastard with my time?

2) read more. this one is left pretty open, so you’d think i could manage it… but a short list under the header includes: 2a) keep up on reading the new yorker & wired yeah right, i read maybe one in 6 of the new yorkers - this damn magazine just keeps coming every week to taunt me.. (i actually have come to completely dread seeing it in my mailbox). wired is a little better but more often than not i read an article or two and then just login and browse the blog headers.. 2b) read a book every month this is bad - i did manage to read about 5 books this year, but they were all in airplanes & airports, over the course of 3 weekends. which is not “one each month”, by any stretch). again - my excuse is always “lack of time”, but the reality here is that i saw probably a few dozen films this year (this week alone - hancock, iron man & burn after reading) so obviously that’s time that could have been spent reading.. so now i’m thinking this means i’m also a lazy bastard..

3) learn something new. thank god for this one.. i actually did learn something new this year - php. so i may be a selfish lazy bastard.. but i am not completely hopeless - or at least that’s how i interpret it.

This year i can already see the top 3 “non-resolution” resolutions, floating in front of my face:
1) volunteer somewhere.
2) read more.
and finally, a real (official) new year’s resolution (the mother of all new years resolutions)..
3) no more cigarettes.

hopefully i can do better than 1 out of 3 in 2009… and hopefully i can make some progress on becoming less of a bastard by next december 26th.

[this photo coutesy of stuart moffat - click to see more]