Resolutions for 2013

I am not going to review my 2012 resolutions. 2012 was awful in so many ways, and I don't want to re-live it here. Let's just move on.

Apparently making a list of resolutions is a set-up for failure: we make too many and can't find the time or energy to do them all. Instead we should set a single objective and then just carry on with the rest of our life. We tend to forget that our employers make us do New Year's Resolutions in the form of "Objectives" for the year and that soaks up a lot of our energy.

Which leads me to this thought: maybe we're not supposed to run our personal lives like our work lives. I can remember how cool I thought it was back in my junior executive days to apply time management and management-by-objectives to my life. It didn't work, but it made me feel like I was making some kind of progress, even though what I was really doing was waiting for the dice to roll my way.

I've made a better fist of my life than I give myself credit for. It is, however, an utilitarian life that gets the bills paid, puts savings in the bank, keeps me employed, washed, fed, exercised and cultured. I've let myself fall into a fairly minimal routine  - and anyone who wants to exercise regularly has to have a fairly minimal routine - that is dominated by the need to get to bed by around 21:30 so I can get a decent night's sleep to wake up at 05:45. Or, as a couple of people shared back to me after a short chair at the DA/UA meeting I'm attending at the moment, it's just monotonous and tedious. It is lacking in sparkle, pixie dust, glamour, illumination, fairy-lights and all-round magic. You may think that a man with my vast experience of life and all-round sophistication would regard twinkle and sparkle as beneath his vast dignity, but actually, those things are important. If I was very rich, I would collect art and visit biennales, and that would be the sparkle, but I'm not, so it can't be. So there's a thing about sparkle and magic. It kinda fits in with what's really on my mind.

I keep thinking that I want to do is change where I work and the company I work for. I want to do that because working in Bishopsgate and for The Bank leaves me feeling lifeless an hour after I arrive. By midday, never mind by the time I leave work, I just want to crawl back home, maybe via the gym. I have no zip let for anything. If I could keep the job and location, and get the zip back, I would be just fine with it. So that's a thing: I'm going to keep changing stuff around until the zip comes back. 

I have a Gym Target - but then you should always have one of those: one unsupported pull-up / chin-up. Hey, I weigh 92 kilos. That's a serious heft. Check out the guys knocking out pull-ups in your gym: I'm guessing none are six-footers much over 80 kilos.

My culture target is to read Musil's The Man Without Qualities. That would make the Big Three: Proust, Joyce and Musil. I have my tickets for Sadlers Wells' Flamenco season in March already and I'm marching through Ezra Pound's Cantos right now.

There are things I think I should do (catch up with distant friends, go to the beach one weekend, take a Street Art tour, decorate the house, see all the new art movies and art shows) and I'm not going to do those. Every year I tell myself I should do those and every year I don't. This year I'm going to assume there's a good reason that I'm not aware of why I don't. Instead I'll do the things that occur to me out of nowhere. Unless it threatens the waistline, of course.

1. One unsupported pull-up by the year end

2. Read Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities

3. Experiment with changes to the daily/weekly routine, diet, entertainment and whatever else until the zip, twinkle and sparkle comes back

4. Do stuff that just occurs to me

A Prosperous New Year To You!