I first wrote this post in December 2015. A year on I’ve decided to review it and comment on what I wrote at the time for New Year 2016. All additions and comments are in bold.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’ve looked at my title and thought, “That incompetent illiterate doesn’t know that it’s a resolution, not a revolution.” Well I might be an incompetent illiterate sometimes but certainly not this time. What’s the point in a New Year’s resolution if it doesn’t produce a revolution in the New Year? Why do we spend the time year after year making decisions to do something different, something life-changing, and then give up on it before January has said hello to February. That’s an ill thought out resolution, not an achievable goal that will make you look, feel or do something different.

I have decided this year to make a list of New Year’s revolutions and am determined to make them work.  I am cheating with some of them because they are continuations of things I have already started, like writing this waffly blog (There have been peaks and troughs this year, times when I’ve written several posts in a week, only to write nothing for a couple of months. This has been particularly true from the start of October until now. Well my teacher workload has shot through the roof, so this has had to suffer) or taking singing lessons to turn this voice of a thousand cats’ choir into the choir of a few less cats (nine hundred and ninety-six maybe!) The singing lessons came to an abrupt end in April when my teacher suddenly became a convicted paedophile and the business was closed down. I suppose there are sometimes things which affect your resolutions that are outside of your control) I want to read at least one “important” book a month, though I’m not sure yet how I will define that. I did read some books but I don’t know how many people would define Please Kill Me as an important book. I guess that’s what I discovered: it was important to me so it was important full stop.  I want to do one sketch a month to make sure I keep developing. I definitely didn’t do this. What can I say. I’m lazy! I’m a busy teacher. I’m always at gigs. I tried to kid myself by posting pictures of old sketches on Instagram but I failed to fool my failed self.  I am pretty much settled on going to India this year too. I definitely followed through on this one. See my India diary   http://www.cre8ivation.com/?p=5715  and want to sign up for the 5km Santa dash around the centre of Liverpool in December 2016. I definitely didn’t do this one. My relationship with the gym was a love hate one, a constantly fluctuating one. We are currently divorced but I am considering a reconciliation. These things will all require perseverance, stickability, endurance even. I want to do more for other people too, and spend more time with friends and family. This probably remained as it had been in the previous year, no more, no less.

Finally a word about bucket lists. It’s common for people to make them when they become terminally ill, as happens in the film. I’m sure Lemmy (the frontman of Motorhead who has just died) did everything he wanted in life. (Add to this Bowie, Ali, Denise and Nana, Prince, George, Rick, Carrie, Debbie and all the others who have made 2016 the most cursed social media tag on the planet.) In fact he said as much. Imagine if he had decided to make a bucket list on Boxing Day when he found out he had cancer. He would have had just two days to fulfil his desires. He would not have achieved it. As the saying goes, “Nobody knows the day or the hour.” Without wanting to sound morbid:  “if a double decker bus crashes into us or a ten ton truck kills the both of us” (thanks, Morrissey) we will have lost the chance to do everything on that bucket list. This last comment sounds particularly sick in the light of what happened in Nice and Berlin but I’ve left it in because it could happen to anyone at any time in any place.

Let your New Year’s revolutions become things on your bucket list. A revolution is an event that upsets the status quo (sorry Francis and Rick-He was still alive when I first wrote this!)  It turns on its head the thing that has become stale and boring, the thing that has made us comfortable and unable to branch out into new areas, skills, talents.  So, for the first time this year I am going to think of my resolutions as revolutions and of my revolutions as items on my bucket list. Happy New Year everyone!

As a final aside, I have not yet thought about my revolutions for 2017. I will do, of course, but I might not let them become public property this year. It’s hard having to explain yourself a year on.

 

Written by Si ©Cre8ivation