Cheers

6:44 p.m. The countdown to the New Year is at hand. As always, we're doing nothing as it's well past our bedtime. The kids will be heading off soon to slumber. They'll awaken in tomorrow just like they did in today. Life is simple like that for kids. They get my mind rolling with the complexities of adulthood.

When did my life change that at 11:59 p.m. tonight something will be different sixty teeny seconds later? I talk of resolutions and changes that need to be made here. Why is it so important it start at that time? What reason is there for us to thrust these sometimes drastic ideals upon ourselves at that precise moment? Usually, in an all or nothing commitment. Is it because with the ringing in of the new year our mortality is realized? Like bells vibrating in our souls telling us we have only a finite time. Kids don't have that problem.

I don't tell my kids they should be nicer to each other next year. I tell them to do it now. I have never said "Wait. Make that change on the first, that's when it'll count." Be a pain, gorge yourself, laze about, put that or this off. They change now. I need to, too.

I think the New Year and it's resolutions is a farce. People don't change because a year goes by, they change because they want to. They need to. They've grown up enough to be responsible to make any differences necessary when the time comes.  A dedication is needed and the date is irrelevant.

Come February, those resolution making people that aren't ready for it start reaching for the TV remote or bag of chips instead of packing up the gym bag. The newly founded penny pinchers are shelling out insane sums for V-day. The hoarders put off that yard sale when the first amicable day arrives. Recycling reformists say "What does this one can really matter?"

This farm business is a commitment, a resolution in the making. Little by little its getting done, we're getting there. I might have a resolution to make certain changes in the new year but I'm ready for them. They've already started in a hundred tiny ways.

Make a resoultion tonight. But do me a favor, make ones you're ready for and bunker down and do it. Don't allow the things in life that you want to pass by year by year as resolutions are tossed aside. Remember, you only get so many tries.