NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS .... WHAT!!

Dear Brand New 2018 Diary,

   The year is turning and I am in reflective mood. This is the time everyone makes new year's resolutions and believe me dear reader, there are enough of them in this morning's paper. So, do I need to join the party - to make some changes and improvements in my life and work? Well, at least to resolutely resolve to think about things - life, art and the universe, etc, and even make some notes about resolving to resolve. I am thinking about  it and so, dear diary, this is where you come in. If I write large and long in your squeaky clean, spanking crisp new pages, then the resolves are there and I could look back at them from time to time to see if I am keeping on track.

   Ah ha, I hear you cry, my dear reader. And what if you're not? Yes, dear reader, as the great man said, 'there's the rub.' What if I'm not on track at all, haven't even got saddled up, never mind got to the starting gates? How will I feel then? Failure already, that's what. Do I need to heap metaphorical coals of fire upon my head? No, I most emphatically do not. 

   So, dear diary, were I thinking about committing some resolutions to your pristine pages, they might look something along the lines of :

   1.   Be a better wife - loving, caring and giving.  No, be reasonable,  that is so never going to happen, especially when spouse is nagging about the writing schedule. In fact, I sometimes think he wished Christmas didn't happen at all in our house and then I could just keep going. Once Boxing Day arrived, so did the question - when are you going to start writing again? So, no, I don't think I'm going for plaster-sainthood in 2018 and the good wife bit is out the window already.

   2.  Alrightey - so what about a better writing schedule then? Better, as in more organised, regular and committed to it? Mmm, now that would be a good resolution, but I think I would have to live on Planet Zog to keep to it. LIFE keeps getting in the way and de-railing me and in any case I hate schedules and being organised. I can find writerly displacement activities in the unlikeliest places and anyway, it's much more fun to take myself by surprise each day and yup, the writing does get done, dear reader, I'm never too sure how but it does but there it is, so we'll dump that one too.

   3.   O.K., so the biggee - less alcohol, a better balanced diet and lots of fresh air and exercise.  I think I need to lie down already just contemplating that lot and it's not even 2018 yet.  Yes, dear diary, I am striving, really I'm striving and I can put on my virtuous face and say number three is regularly achieved as I stride out like a fiend with my pants on fire, eager to cover the miles and shed the pounds. I might think about the 'moderation in all things' bit in 2018, but I'm not ready to commit to black and white in your pages yet. Ask me again halfway through the year. With a bit of luck everyone's resolutions will be dead and buried by then and I for one will work very hard and forgetting all of mine, even if they are non-resolutions.

   So, dear 2018 Diary, your pages look destined to remain very blank. I can't bear the sight of your unfilled pages  staring reproachfully back at me  over the next twelve months, so it might be a kindness, (to you and to me), to give you away to a more deserving cause. Now I think about it, spouse has been banging on about new year resolutions all week and I notice they are all for my self-improvement. I think I'll give him this little black book and ask him what his own intentions are for 2018. Nobly, I will refrain from filling it up for him and I can't wait to see what he comes up with. 

   In the meantime, Happy  New Year my dear reader and I hope and pray that 2018 will be kind to us all. I will see you next week, unreconstructed and unresolved as ever and looking forward to muddling through the days and weeks with you. I have a new romantic comedy to begin and if that doesn't have possibilities for muddle, tangle and all things confusing, I don't know what does. And that's before I've started. Hey ho, bring on 2018, unresolved I think.