How many New Year's resolutions have been broken over the course of several decades? I'm guilty of this all the time. Although I've made steady improvements year over year in my life, the hard defined New Year's resolution is always something that we approach as a binary in terms of success or failure. Of course, that should never be the case. Even small gains in goals set during the New Year's ritual are admirable. And that's what we're essentially looking for: smalls gains on meaningful goals.

Making resolutions is not new or unique to modern culture. One of the earliest historical records of New Year's resolutions can be found in ancient Babylon. During the festival of Akitu, the Babylonians made promises to their gods about debts. During the beginning of each year, the ancient Romans, meanwhile, made promises to the god Janus, who was the god of beginnings and transitions. Medieval times saw knights take what referred to as the "peacock vow" at the end of the year. Knights would take this vow to reaffirm their commitment to chivalry. The term itself was used because the plume of the peacock's feathers was a representation of the knight's honor, bravery, and noble conduct. Taking the vow yearly was a reminder to continue to uphold the ideals of knighthood—effectively it was a symbolic reminder of their code of conduct.

Modern resolutions became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries as an opportunity for self-reflection and self-improvement.

Goal-setting, proficiency, productivity gurus, mindfullness moments… all of these things become so trendy that they all become burdens themselves, and it never helps that while scrolling your Instagram you can be inundated with advertisements for more supplements, apps, and specialty devices to keep you purchasing your way to your new resolutions.

I was born in 1979, and as of this writing, I'm 45 years old. I've mentioned before how I was starting to come to terms with a lot of things that I would never do in my life. My priorities have changed, I'm a parent, and there just isn't enough time in the world to be "never not hustling." I'd much rather be comfortably bored and happy between guardrails of my own life.

With that said, 2024 had me draw up a list of what I thought was necessary moving forward. That list was:

• Give yourself a budget/allowance
• Eat better
• Drink more water
• Drink less coffee
• Drink less alcohol (less beer, more wine infrequently)—4 beer limit/2 wine glass limit
• Sleep better
• Exercise regularly
• Meditate regularly
• Journal regularly (physical and digital, blogging)
• Draw more (and watercolor)
• Game to unwind
• Collect old Vertigo comics
• Read even more (Finish Foundation, etc.)
• Use social media better

This is arguably a decades worth of resolutions. I guess I'm making up for lost time.

The ones that have been highlighted are the ones I've made little progress on over the course of the first year, and reflecting on them, made me want to draw this post up as a mid-season report card.

Giving myself a budget has been difficult. I don't often spread out my purchases, and if there is something I want, I get it. I have zero credit card debt, and I live within my means. I do save money, but I see a budget as something that would allow me to save even more money. This has been difficult… the whole impulse thing.

I am certainly not "eating better," but I am eating less. I restarted intermittent fasting, which has been working well for me, but I've done little to change my diet within that window. It's been difficult because no matter how much I want to eat better, my kids have a very limited range in which they eat. Pizza and chicken tenders cause less arguments than salads or grain bowls. This might be something where I have to do my own shopping and cooking to really satisfy it.

Alcohol has been the bane of my health reform, and I've been unable to find a replacement for "winding down." My original goal was to simply drink less frequently. I've been mildly successful at limiting alcohol to the weekend, and I've been less successful on limiting the number of beverages. I have realized that none of this is dependence. It's a combination of change in habit conflicting with desire. I do enjoy having a beer or two on a hot weekend, so I'm struggling with eliminating a "like" for a better long-term health outlook.

Part of my resolution was to largely eliminate social media and replace doomscrolling with former hobbies that made me happy. I started the year doing better at drawing more, but that has slowly faded, and I've failed to get into watercolors the way I've wanted to. As a former avid gamer, I've done very little of that in recent memory, and I haven't been able to get back into it without feeling that I could be doing something better. It's possible that I start to look at retro-gaming as a better tool to unwind, considering the low mental investment cost.

The rest of the bullet points have been largerly successful. Limiting coffee to two cups has allowed me to increase my water intake. Reduction of alcohol during the week has improved sleep. Martial arts has been supplemented with HIIT training and my step totals are getting really close to a 10K average. Yesterday was the first day my blood pressure registered back into the normal range. Meditation has always been in my repertoire, but I've amped it up with a few meditation apps. Journally has been coming along (both on this site and in physical notebooks), and if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I've been reading more, collecting old Vertigo comics, and—with the exception of Instagram—largely stay off of social media.

To what end?

Despite the knock on resolutions, I do find that having something on paper to go back to and remind you of what you were thinking at the beginning of the year is a good thing. Maybe it's just for motivational purposes. Chances are if you took the time to sit down and hash this out, it was something you were certainly spending deep thoughts on, so it's always worth revisiting to see if you're meeting your own expectations or if your thoughts have changed at all.

In my case, these ideas are less of a quick 2024 turnaround and something that I want to hold for the next few decades. I feel that work, social media, and deep entrenchment in producing content for the sake of a pat on the back (re: Microsoft MVP status) disrupted my progress on the life I wanted to live.

This list is a reminder of the direction I want to travel. And checking in… my progress doesn't seem too bad.