Like many of you, I suspect, I avoid New Year's resolutions. This has been going on for many years and it is by now a familiar pattern. Every year, towards the end of the year, we are exhorted to better ourselves, to shed the poor practices of the past and to Do Better. Every year I am tempted to participate. Some years I make these resolutions anyway, and inevitably wind up disappointed. By the end of Feburary I am basically the same guy I was before. The gap between my sparkle eyed visions of a perfect life and the reality of it, fuzzy in both its sadness and its joy, endures -- the Sisyphean impossibility of setting everything in my life straight in one vow of self-improvement.

It was to my surprise, then, that I decided to set a few goals for twenty oh six. I believe these are actually attainable. No pie in the sky here, I don't think. (The biggest two dreams I have are conspicuously absent). FWIW, here they are, in no particular order:

1. Continue being a good dad to my two daughters. That's this year and every year and it will never be dislodged from #1.
2. Clean out the basement and donate the bulk of my used books to the library.
3. Lose 20 pounds.
4. Exercise regularly again.
5. Volunteer even more. It never fails to make me feel good.
6. Take a closer look at my long term finances, as much as it makes my eyes glaze over.
7. Make more friends.
8. Lose the last of my preachiness.

So I guess I'm still making resolutions, even if I resist calling them such. You?