"News" Years Resolution 2009

The new year has begun and to help ensure that I am more successful than last year, I have decided to make only one New Year’s Resolution. I’ve been thinking about blogging, but honestly have been feeling a tad overwhelmed at the state of our current world and life situation. It’s difficult to be funny when there isn’t much to be funny about. So...

My New Year’s Resolution for 2009 is to be more unaware of what is happening in the world. It would have been to become part ostrich and burry my head in a hole in the ground for hours at a time, but the former resolution was easier. For example:

If a world war breaks out because of the conflicts in Gaza and Israel, I don’t want to know about it until bombs start landing in my yard. If Russian professor Igor Panarin’s prediction comes true and the United States as we know it breaks up because of a civil war due to our country’s moral decline, and the East Coast comes under British rule, I don’t want to find out until they start making me eat scones and crumpets for breakfast every day. If my stocks continue to tank, leaving me with no retirement, and no way to effectively pay for my children’s college education, I will consider my children’s non-admission letter to the university, plenty of notice.

If one more person in my family gets sick or is hospitalized, or if any more of my friends or friends’ family gets cancer, or if anybody else dies, please do not give me the details. Simply tell me to put your name on my ever-growing list of things to pray for, and I’m on it.

If more houses on our street get broken into, by whom everyone assumes is a teenager looking for things to steal, sell, and purchase drugs with, I don’t want to be informed until that said teenager is standing in my living room holding a beer, my watch and my $10 earrings. At which point I will offer that teenager my $20 earrings along with the kid’s lunch money and promise to help him/her post their stolen items on Craigslist, right after my husband kicks his or her arse.

If my house continues to be valued at less than I paid for it, eventually reaching the point where I will never be able to move, let alone pay off a 60-year mortgage, I will consider myself as finally having some roots, so keep me in the dark.

If I hear about one more filthy rich person who has bilked thousands of people out of billions of dollars so they could own a dwelling big enough to house a small nation, and sip martinis on their yacht collection at 9:30 in the morning, I will have to jump off the roof of my paltry $350,000 dollar home into a pile of burning leaf mulch. So don’t let me hear about it.

And on the local front, if I bend my ear to any more petty squabbling about how South Easton residents are inferior to North Easton residents because our pocketbooks aren’t as fat as the Northies, and the trailer park in the Southie section brings us down, or how the two zip codes in town define us, I’m going to have to remind everyone-especially the crusty-uppers who care about such matters, that they are living in EASTON after all, and not in a quaint brownstone in Back Bay, or in Dover or Wellesley. I’ll have to remind them that it’s easy to be a big fish in a small pond, and if they really want to throw around dollar signs, they need to relocate to the ocean.

But I won’t be receiving anymore such news. I won’t because I’m eliminating all information from my daily routine and lifestyle. I’ll have to stop watching all television (except for the Food Network), and cease reading all newspapers. I will no longer be able to frequent any restaurant with a t.v.-which pretty much limits my choices to Wendy’s and Subway. Now, the fact that I am trying to make a tiny living out of writing for such mediums does present a conundrum, but I’ll have faith in myself to figure it out. Limiting my restaurant choices and places I can frequent will help me save money, help me save calories, and both will make my body healthier and my husband happier, which will lead to marital bliss. (All those things being ancillary New Year’s Resolution bonuses.)

It’s so drastic! You scoff. Just Relax! You cry. Believe me, I have tried. My first thought was to start looking for prime real estate somewhere in Canada or Montana perhaps, some remote mountain location with a snuggly, warm cave and a thriving forest on which to provide for my children. Something a reclusive family would be proud to call home. Alas, my husband simply wasn’t on-board. So I changed my mental parameters, and came up with my resolution to be less involved and informed about the world. It’s a win-win situation for everyone: our family saves on media expenses, my illusions for hope for the world remain intact, I can continue raising my children without wondering what kind of world they will inherit, and we don’t have to move. Whew.

Now, for those who are worried about my mental synapsis slowing due to lack of informational stimulation, have no fear. I have found plenty of media outlets to keep me healthy and challenged. These Web sites offer only good news, positive news, things that make a human glad to be human. For those who are also interested in browsing these sites, you have four to choose from: The Good News Network, Happy News, Heroic Stories, and Only Positive News. A couple you’ll need to subscribe to, but I figure that since I’m not paying for the Globe or Wall Street Journal, I have a few bucks I can throw towards that. In fact, I bet they accept freelance writing…..hey…wait a minute….
my aforementioned conundrum, solved.

I’m curious to hear about your New Year’s Resolutions. Losing weight? Eating your way towards health? Quit smoking? Swearing? What is it that is motivating you this year? Post your New Year’s Resolutions and share your good news!

(Photo credit B&W poster, 3500cm2 project curated by Lorenzo Benedetti, for Blue Room in Rome)