Each year, many of us resolve to make changes in our lives. We promise ourselves that this is the year we will keep our resolutions and improve our lives as a result. Too often, though, we break our promises to ourselves and let our best intentions fall victim to the bustle of everyday life. We expect too much of ourselves and as a result, we fail. Instead of resolutions, we expect revolutions. We think that we can make major changes in our lives by simply deciding to do so. Too often, it proves to be too much for us to take.

This year, I have decided to make evolutions, not resolutions. I resolve to evolve my life. I’ll make an ambitious list, but I will promise myself to take deliberate steps toward achieving them in the long term. That way, I will not have failed when I give in to temptation, or when I forget to remember my list. I will simply steer back toward the end goal, constantly adjusting my heading like navigating a boat that is influenced by the tides, the currents, the waves and the weather.

I will share my list with the world now. Keep in mind that some of the items on my list are really tasks… big, ugly “to-do” things that have been haunting me for months or years. So…. here goes nothing:

• Health: I’m currently at my highest weight ever. 230+ pounds to be vaguely precise. While the weight/height ratio charts that I have seen indicate my ideal weight to be 175 pounds, my personal goal is to break 200. I’ll do that by actually making use of the elliptical trainer that I bought 8 months ago. I’ll watch what I eat. I’ll eat more healthy foods and less fatty, sugary things. Starting Monday.
• Procrastination: I’m always putting things off. I’ve been meaning to start an exercise/diet for months now and I keep saying I’ll start on Monday, but Monday never comes. I’ll force myself not to procrastinate. Starting Monday.
• Clutter: One of the things that drives me totally crazy is clutter. I’m also the most guilty cause of this around my house. My shed, my workshop (storage room), and my desk are all VERY good examples of areas of the homestead totally under my control that are also totally out of control. This year, I vow to take steps to clean them up. I’ll throw stuff away that I forgot I had. I’ll find a place for everything and keep everything in its place. Starting Monday or Tuesday.
• Scanning photos: This is another of those big ugly to-do items I mentioned. I’ve got all of my parents’ old photo albums and all of my wife’s old photo albums that I’ve been meaning to scan, digitally enhance, organize and catalog. This has been a pet project for a couple of years and I have made some progress in spurts. Once I get that procrastination thing under control, I’ll attack this one. Starting Wednesday.
• Learning to play guitar: A few years ago, we bought our son an electric guitar for Christmas. At the same time, I got an acoustic guitar. I’ve always thought it would be cool to be able to strum a few chords, howling out an off-key tune, sitting in front of a fire on summer’s eve. So far, I’ve been able to accomplish the off-key tune, the howling, and sitting by a fire-barrel on a summer’s eve, but my past intentions of learning to play the guitar fell victim to my procrastination addiction. So, starting next week, I’ll dust off the “Learn to Play Guitar” CD’s I purchased, and finally learn how to strum a tune. Hmmm… maybe I’ll start the week after that.
• Speaking of CD’s I’ve purchased, I also bought a bunch of “Learn How to Speak French” CD’s that are sitting amongst the clutter somewhere in the house. When I find them (once I defeat my procrastination addiction and my clutter affliction), I’ll start learning how to parlez francais, eh. Non?

January 8th may seem a little late to publish a post about New Years resolutions, but I kept putting it off. I’ll have to stop doing that, starting Monday.

Monday, Oct 8, 2007 - Canadian Thanksgiving.

You know, we all have problems. Lately, I’ve had a couple of occasions where I know I’ve rubbed folks the wrong way. I’ve approached difficult situations with the best of intentions but somehow they’ve seemed to backfire on me. I’ve been forced to choose between the lesser of two evils only to be left wondering afterwards if I’d made the right choices. It’s easy to start feeling down when you start to doubt you own normally good judgment. It’s easy to be pissed off at life.

But, today is Thanksgiving. If you take it seriously, then you should take some time this day to give thanks and appreciate the good things in your life. You should count your blessings. I have many. And I am thankful for them.

There’s a song by Montgomery Gentry that nails it for me. Lucky Man does a good job driving home this very point. Here’s a portion of the lyrics:

I have days where I hate my job
This little town and the whole world too
Last Sunday when my Bengals lost
Lord, it put me in a bad mood
I got moments when I curse the rain
Then complain when the sun’s too hot
I look around at what everyone has
And I forget about all I got

But I know I’m a lucky man
God’s given me a pretty fair hand
Got a house and a piece of land
A few dollars in a coffee can
My old truck’s still running good
My ticker’s tickin’ like they say it should
I got supper in the oven, a good woman’s lovin’
And one more day to be my little kid’s dad
Lord knows I’m a lucky man.

I wanted to include a video of the song, but found it difficult to find it. But I did find this YouTube video of some dude doing a very good job on the song.

Comedian, Richard Jeni, died today of an apparent suicide. According to CNN.com, he was still alive when they arrived on the scene. He had shot himself in the face. He died later in the hospital.

Richard Jeni was a very funny man. If you have 6 minutes, take the time to watch this video. You will witness first hand his comedic genius. It’s sad to see that disappear.

When I posted this video, it had 15,949 hits on YouTube. There were only 11 videos found using the search term “richard jeni”. My guess is that both of these numbers will expand exponentially over the next few days.

• In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
• In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.
• In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
• In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
• In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
• In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.
• In 1 year your risk of having a heart attack will have dropped by half.
• In 5 years your risk of having a stroke returns to that of a non-smoker.
• In 10 years your risk of lung cancer will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
• In 15 years your risk of heart attack will have returned to that of a non-smoker.

I found this list while browsing the internet this evening.

It’s funny that a comment from one gentleman was ” Yeehaw! I hit the ten-year mark last summer. Too bad I gained 60 lbs. since then. I wonder what risk category that puts me in.”

I got a summons in the mail yesterday. What?!? A summons? The government of New Brunswick saw it fit to think that I may be fit to serve on a jury. The document said that the trial is expected to last 7 weeks.

Now, I’ve been called to jury duty years ago when I lived in Newfoundland. About 200 potential jurors showed up, were counted, endured roll call only to hear the defendant’s lawyer say that they were electing trial by judge. Whew! A close call. Only three hours of my life wasted.

But I don’t have such a good feeling about this one. I think this could be “the one”… I don’t think I could purposely attempt to throw the selection process and get booted. But I don’t want to spend 7 weeks away from work and life to serve on a jury.

I don’t know anyone who has actually gone through participating in a trial by jury (other than a few guys from the old neighbourhood, but they were defendants). Anybody out there been through it? Any advice?

My wife forwarded an email to me the other day of a list of rules that Bill Gates supposedly shared in a speech to a group of high school students. How true that is, I don’t know, but the rules in the email were pretty good. I’d seen them before in another form, but thought they might be worthy of a post here.

• Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
• Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
• Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
• Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
• Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.
• Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
• Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
• Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
• Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
• Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
• Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.