resolve

The New Year is breathing down my neck like a chain-smoking hobo the day after a bender-- which is to say, it's looming nearby, all stenchy and impossible to ignore.

I am not anti-New Year nor anti-change; on the contrary. And that, dear friends, is the problem. I am super PRO change. I crave fresh starts and new beginnings like a birthday girl craves cake. ("I also crave cake," says the ten pounds I've gained since mid-November.)

I want a change, a fresh start, a clean break from the old and a rush toward the new with nary a backwards glance. Indeed: I am PRO resolution girl. (Who craves cake.)

But I hate doing things alone—and so I am throwing down a challenge, a challenge to all those resolution haters out there: Here are 5 resolutions. They’re small. They’re easy. They can be taken incrementally. And thus, I give you:

My Resolution Challenge:

1) Shop Local. At least once per week, shop at a locally owned business for your food, or your clothes, or your gas, or your school supplies, or your entertainment, or whatever. You spend the money anyway—why not make the effort, just once per week, to spend your money with locally owned business?

2) Meet your neighbors. You know who I’m talking about; those dudes over in 4C or that lady with the yappy dog or that family three doors down. Those people that you barely acknowledge with a grunt and a nod of the head? Those people are your community. Crazy, right? Yeah. Meet them. Take the first step. Be the one to make the effort. It is crazy amazing how good you feel actually knowing the names of the people who live nearby, let alone small nubbins of their lives.

3) Learn about your local government. Do you have any idea who your area councilmember is? Or the name of the city clerk? But these are the people that do things that affect our lives every day—like raising the sewage and water rates, or deciding if the next Walmart can be built two streets over. They decide the things that matter in your world. Wouldn’t it be a good idea if you knew who they were?

4) Volunteer once per month. It’s awesome that we’re all rallying for that massive boxmart conglomerate to give our community a million dollars, but if we all pitched in just once per month, we wouldn’t need some corporate deus ex machina to appear with what we think might be some fat, golden egg. Feeding the homeless. Working at a shelter. Tutoring for a local elementary school. It doesn’t have to be your whole life—just give 1 hour per month.

5) Visit a new place in town once per month. Last week I found myself in a totally different part of town, on the "other side of the tracks." FACT: I did not get killed. OTHER FACT: People were nice. Golly, go figure.

Everyone tries to talk the talk—lip service is oh-so-much fun. But how often do we walk the talk? (Wait, that metaphor is functionally impossible to work with. How do you walk a verbal?) HOW OFTEN do we do what we say we will do?

So the gauntlet is down; the challenge is on. My Resolution Challenge. Who’s with me?