Never Gonna Happen.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.

I don’t even pretend to have the best of intentions about making them. I don’t try to get around to it. I don’t go all Scarlett O’Hara and think, “Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow, I’ll figure out the perfect resolutions to help me get what I want…I mean, to help make me a better person.”

Nope. Not gonna happen.

But, as I wrote in Make a List and Check It Twice, I do like lists. I see the value in them. BK (a/k/a, “Before Kid”), I took great joy in making lists and crossing things off them. When I was a lawyer, I would even put things on my lists that I’d already done just for the pleasure of X-ing them out with a Sharpie.

These days, though, the list of things I haven’t done is so long that it depresses me, so I’ve been resisting the list-making urge. When that urge rears her nasty little organized head, I give her a swift jab.

“Get out, leave me alone, I’m not gonna finish you anyway,” I want to yell (but don’t since that might get me committed).

And yet.

I miss the pleasure of X-ing things out. I need to satisfying that urge, put it to good use.

Resolutions are Made to be Broken

So it occurred to me: What if I let myself have fun with a resolutions list? After all, resolutions don’t just have to be about things that I aspire to do or be. They can be about things I’m never gonna do.

Consider the dictionary definition of “resolution:”

Resolutions aren’t just made to be carried out and honored. They’re made to be broken (just like promises, but that’s another story).

You can make a list of resolutions to clarify who you are in an ideal world, but also to clarify who you’re not. Who you’re never gonna be. Who you’re happy not to be.

A Writing Exercise

Spend 10 minutes making a list entitled, “10 Resolutions I Know I’ll Never Keep.” Write the list in your own voice or in the voice of one of your characters, maybe a villainous one, someone who’s got no boundaries but perhaps is suffering a rare twinge of conscience over something s/he’s done that got a greater than usual bad reaction.

Then for 20 minutes, write a short story or an essay using that list. You can keep the items in list form like the stories I mentioned in Make a List and Check It Twice, or you can incorporate the items into a more traditional story or essay.

Start your timer. Ready, set, write! And if you feel the urge, let me know how it goes by leaving a comment below.

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