I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Resolutions

Years ago, and I mean many years ago, like back when I was around 13, 14, something like that, I would spend New Year’s Eve with my best friend Larry and we’d watch TV, play Scrabble with his sister and eat Jeno’s pizza rolls. Come midnight we’d scramble for some paper and we’d write down our New Year’s resolutions. Our resolutions were never anything important, they generally revolved around school stuff, band and girls. There were resolutions to ‘swap gum’ with whichever girl it was we liked at the time and thinking back now, I sort of still like the expression even though it nauseates me a little bit. Our resolutions were never realized, but making them was fun and forgetting them was easy. We were naïve and not yet old enough to recognize failure.

Larry and I lost track of each other when we got to high school, but I continued to make New Year’s resolutions and, not breaking with tradition, the resolutions were very seldom realized. However my unfulfilled resolutions were no longer easy to forget and thinking about them after the fact wasn’t fun but more a self-perceived sign of failure.

Once I became old enough to where I could no longer stay awake to see the new year in I decided it was time to do away with New Year’s resolutions and I haven’t made a resolution in a very long time. However old habits die hard and while I no longer resolve to do anything, I do reflect (Ha, so I’m not a vampire!) on what I might like to do or see in the upcoming year. I suppose you could say it’s like a resolution but not really. It’s a semi-resolution. A resolution-lite.

It’s a resolution without the commitment.

So here’s 2013 already two weeks old and I made some commitment-free resolutions.

I mean reflections.

After much mulling and reflecting I had a short list and I thought I’d share some of the the less maudlin ones here with you.

I thought it might not be such a bad thing to not waste so much time on the internet networking socially. You’ve got to agree that Facebook is an enormous time suck and I thought I could use that time to write more, both here in this blog and also for more failed attempts at publication.

Another reflection I had was finally working toward becoming manager of the Minnesota Twins but I decided I’d put that one on the back burner until at least late in the season, maybe around late August, and focus instead on photography.

I don’t understand much about photography with all those different settings and stuff like F-stops and shutter speeds and ISO and white balance, but I do like taking pictures so my plan is to shlep (It’s Yiddish, go ahead and look it up. The verb, not the noun.) my camera around with me more places this year and take more pictures. I have no ultimate goal in mind with photography other than to simply look at things and see things that aren’t completely noticeable at first glance and take pictures of them. Things that aren’t limited to just pictures of people and architecture and nature, but unique things. Not that pictures of people and architecture and nature are bad or that people who take pictures of people and architecture and nature are doing anything wrong, I just like the idea of looking for something where something doesn’t exist and somethings that can happen with people and architecture and nature and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know what to call that sort of stuff at this point other than unique things.

Oh, by the way, how do you capture a unique rabbit? Unique up on him.

So to start things off with unique pictures here’s a picture of a potato chip that looks like a whale.

Potato chip that looks like a whale.

Happy New Year (minus two weeks)!