Revisiting My 2018 Resolutions

One of my last posts of 2017 was a declaration of resolutions for the upcoming new year. Now that 2018 is in the books, I thought it would be interesting to see what those resolutions were (there was only one that I remembered) and how I did. What I discovered was a mixed bag: some complete successes and utter failures. Here are the results:

Get my book published:  The book isn’t published, but it is in the process of being submitted to various publishers. This campaign started later in the year than I anticipated, but at least the word is out and folks are taking a look at it. Hopefully 2019 will be the year.

Break ground on a new house or be in the process of remodeling an existing one: If you follow this blog, you know that ground has been broken and the foundation is in. Unless something catastrophic occurs, we should be moved in by summer. We nailed this one!

Be ten pounds lighter: Um……not even close. I can say that I did get to that point at one time during the year, but got tired of the struggle of dieting and said the hell with it. My motivation now is to not count every single morsel I put in my mouth, and try not to exceed a certain weight. It has worked so far, but, in all honesty, I am not going to get near a scale until after Ground Hog’s Day.

My MS symptoms will remain confined to one limb: Put this one in the success column. I can’t say I had a lot to do with this. Maybe I can thank my neurologist, or chalk it up to sheer luck. Either way, I’m not complaining.

Post every week to this blog: I had reservations about this one, but I managed not only to accomplish this task, but posted more than once a week on a handful of occasions. There were a couple of times where I had writer’s block, and thought this might be the week I falter, but it never happened. Another success!

Finish the manuscript of Novel #2: Not only did I not finish it, I barely wrote anything at all. I did noodle around with it in the beginning of the year, but I was more focused on doing everything I needed to do on the social media front to help support the novel I did write, in addition to posting to this blog. Those are lame excuses, however, because if I want to do something and am motivated to do it, it gets done. I get a big, fat F on this one.

Drink less: I was never a heavy drinker, but listed this because it would help with my weight, and because I didn’t think it was good for my MS. I never consciously thought about it during the year, but did reduce my alcohol consumption. In all candor, I think part of the reason I was able to do this was because of my new MS medicine, which has suppressed the desire for alcohol. After all, why ruin a good buzz? I’m not sure if this is cheating, but I’ll call this one a success.

Use the word “fuck” less: Didn’t happen. Enough said. It’s such a versatile word, and rolls off the tongue so effortlessly. This one was probably doomed from the beginning.

Eat Better: I wasn’t eating all that badly to start. I thought I would eliminate a few fats from my diet, keeping my weight loss goal in mind, but that fell by the wayside when I said to hell with dieting. So I’m not eating “better”, but I’m not eating any worse either, so call this one is a wash.

Get more sleep: That didn’t come close to happening. Old habits are hard to break, I’m afraid. A definite failure.

So out of these ten resolutions, four were achieved in their totality, four were colossal failures, one was partial failure and one was a wash. I guess that’s par for the course.

Author: Steve Markesich

I am loving husband, a doting father, a Red Sox fanatic, an aspiring novelist and MS advocate. Feel free to check out my stevemarkesich.com web site. View all posts by Steve Markesich