...I let my New Year's resolution lapse in January, then rationalized a way of resurrecting it?

"If you're broken it's because you're brittle..."
-Eleanor of Acquitaine, The Lion in Winter

Brittle. That's what most resolutions are, and that's why most of them fail. The problem isn't a lack of committment, but rather the narrow confines of the terms of victory; resolving to go to the gym every day is laudable, but tricky. You get sick, work runs late, and your resolution's busted. Of course, you could always go the next day ... but you probably won't. What's the point? You failed, and now you're going to be doughy and feeble for another year. Game over.

This blog was started with the intention of recording a daily memory - a little piece of every day worth keeping around. That cockeyed bit of optimism coughed and died after a perfect storm of ill health, work stress and multifaceted emotional torture left me with a whole string of days which, frankly, I just don't want to remember. In real life, this translated into my boss wandering into my office, handing me a month's worth of work to do in a week, peering at me, and telling me I should take a vacation. As far as Blog of Days is concerned, it was a deafening silence.

Now, I have returned.

The secret to successful resolution-making, I think, is probably the secret to success in most things. First, of course, it's good to figure out if you have any reason to believe that you know what the hell you're attempting. This, however, may be impossible, and the very fact that you're in resolution-mode indicates that you're probably so deep in a fog of wishful thinking and self deception that you may do more harm than good. The second and more important step is this:

Build flexibility into the system

Know where you can bend to keep yourself from breaking. Don't bet a year's worth of fitness on an uninterrupted 365 days of exercise; give yourself a realistic regimen, set goals to mark your progress, and stick at it as well as you can. Your chances of becoming a supermodel will not appreciably diminish, but your chances of falling off the wagon (treadmill?) and ending up bitter and tubby definitely will. Going on a diet? Forget the zero-flavor stormtrooper mentality or you'll be up to your elbows in Ben and/or Jerry before the ink on your resolution is dry. Decide to eat pizza only once a week instead of every night, and the scales are mathematically guaranteed to be kind to you. Be happy with Europe; don't invade Russia too.

So, humbled but determined, I return once more to blogdom. I won't succeed in closing out the year with twelve uninterrupted months' worth of neat little diary posts ... but I will have done what I can. Since the other option is trying to do what I can't and ending up doing nothing at all, it'll have to do.

And, because my inner Johnny Cutcorners is whispering to me that I can still weasel my way back to the land of non-failures if I'm willing to rough up a few technicalities, I hereby present:

21 memories from the last 21 unrecorded days (in no particular order):

Remember that time...

...I forced myself to go to the gym because I felt awful and hadn't been for weeks?
...I embarassed myself by nearly passing out at the gym?
...I weighed myself in the locker room and realized that I'd lost 15 pounds in three weeks?
...I made my first doctor's appointment in three years because I thought I was dying?
...I met my doctor, and he turned out to be Ron Rifkin (as far as I can tell)?
...I got weighed at the doctor's office and realized that the gym scale is busted - I had in fact lost 25 pounds in three weeks?
...I nodded bravely when, after a series of blood tests, I was told that I was suffering hemolysis as a result of the unexplained presence of cryoglobulins in my blood and that I would have to have a chest CT to rule out lymphoma?
...I spent a week meditating on the word 'lymphoma'?
...I cleaned out the vitamin aisle at CVS while waiting for my results, including a bottle of something called 'Gentle Iron' that terrified me almost as much as the word 'lymphoma'?
...I went to Linens 'n' Things to get a bathmat, weighed myself on ten different bathroom scales (much to the delight of the dude who was obviously going to have to put them back), and realized that my doctor's scale was busted, and that I was in fact only seven pounds shy of my healthy weight?
...I did not, and will not, return my doctor's phone calls asking me to visit a hematologist who I'm pretty certain is his brother-in-law?
...I got promoted at work?
...I nodded bravely when I was told that my new position would entail about twice as much work as before?
...I nodded bravely when I was told that my new salary wouldn't even be determined for a few more months, and wouldn't kick in for another month after that?
...I realized that there are some things that I am to blame for, and that I'll always have to live with that?
...I realized that there are some things that I am not to blame for - and that the ignorance of others does not excuse my own failure to accept that?
...I learned that it's easier to hate somebody for what they did or didn't do than to understand why they did or didn't do it?
...I accepted that there are some things I'll probably never have the chance to understand?
...I had the sense to be grateful for all the amazing things that I have in my life, and to repudiate the notion that I should be ashamed of taking joy where I can find it?
...For the first time in a long time (a looooooooong time) I was excited to talk to my parents?
...LPB moved in with me?

*whew*

So, there you have it. Twenty-one memories from twenty-one silent days, signed, sealed and delivered. It's been a bumpy road ... but I've walked every step of it. And I'll do my level best to record the rest of the journey in a much more conscientious fashion.

I'll probably fail.

But that's okay.