Welcome Back, Me!

I've been pondering this obsession I seem to have with making resolutions at the end of each calendar year, assessing them on my birthday six months later, and then starting it all over six months after that. I also seem to have some obsession with making these resolutions public. It started with a resolution to put the laundry away before retiring for the night, something I did not publicize in my embarrassment that the bedroom was typically home to twin laundry baskets, and we went through the clean basket each morning in search of this or that item. Resolving just grew from there, though I tried to simplify things a bit a year ago. And let's just say that the six-month review is good to go for today as well.

So how do I satisfy the obsession this year? My cousin-in-law, Debi, called 2012 her "year of just because." In that vein, I'm thinking of 2013 as my "year of why the hell not." As younger son put it, the question to ask is not "why?" but "why the hell not?" I'd have to say that that about covers it for 2013, or at least the first half of it. I've committed to trying something about which I feel quite intimidated, a GoRuck Challenge. If you read through the comments on the aforementioned page, you'll see one from me asking if it's reasonable to think a 56-year-old woman can finish one of these. You'll also see the reply from one of the GoRuck founders that yes, it's quite reasonable in that it is more of a mental than physical challenge. Yeah, well, I have some problems in that regard, too, but hey. Why the hell not? Both sons are signed up, and both encouraged me to register. A friend who is one of our karate instructors said that he'd do it if I did (there's was a special in which two people could register for the price of one). It mean 137 days (according to a countdown widget that younger son put on my smart-aleck phone) of serious preparation, but the party at the end could be a doozey.

A couple of years ago, one of my resolutions was to try to learn to speak some Vietnamese. I bought a fairly cheap computer program and found it not very helpful at all. I did discover that a little goes a long way, though, scoring lots of points in Hue last spring by simply saying "thank you" in Vietnamese whenever appropriate. I gave in to all the reviews of Rosetta Stone and the incentive offered by having spent what it costs and purchased the three levels of Vietnamese they offer. It took three tries to get the first lesson finished to an acceptable level (I went from 70 percent correct to 79 percent to 92 percent at which point I was offered the chance to move to the next lesson), but I can see how the program is working. It really is immersion of a sort, and you really do start to make connections. There's no next trip to Vietnam scheduled, though I'm hoping for one in 2014. Hopefully, that will be enough time to learn a bit more than the "thank you" I already have.

And that's it. I think that's enough. I've been vacillating about keeping up the quickie photo blog that replaced the photo-a-day blog I did for the year in which I was 55 or bring my blogging efforts back here. I'll give it some thought over the next couple of days. The two things above will require some focused attention. There's also this thing called a job that clearly comes before time devoted to writing here. The martial arts I don't want to give up, and the creative efforts I'd like to do more of. How many balls can I keep in the air at one time? We shall see. In the meantime, happy new year. I think it's going to be a good one.