Resolving to be resolute
I will once again make some New Year’s resolutions even though I cannot remember a past resolution I kept. Like most people I start out with brave and sincere determination, only to have it all fall apart by Valentine’s Day.
One year I resolved to make myself filthy rich by the Fourth of July. I got half of it right. Which half? Use your imagination.
Another year I resolved to catch one of each species of Chesapeake Bay game fish that was big enough to earn a Virginia Saltwater Tournament citation. By late July I had caught shark and a tarpon. I also caught bluefish, flounder, gray trout, spot, croaker, and speckled trout. All were too little for citations. Black drum and red drum were just rumors.
Even though my resolution went the way of crab bait, the tarpon gave me something to brag about. Tarpon are common catches in more tropical waters, such as Florida. They visit Virginia for a few weeks in July when just a few are caught. A friend reminded me my catch came from one of the Eastern Shore barrier island channels. It did not come from the Chesapeake Bay.
There were myriad other resolutions. I was going to drop down to middleweight, write a bestseller, build a boat, travel to Ireland, read 10 books on the top 100 books of all time list, make seven new friends, run a marathon, teach my sons how to fly fish, yada yada yada.
None of that happened.
One year, during a discussion of New Year’s resolutions, my father said I was shooting too high.
“Make resolutions that are attainable,” he said. “One year I gave up tuna fish. Haven’t touched the stuff since.”
Nor did he touch it before he made the resolution.
“Where does it say a resolution has to be a sacrifice?” he demanded. “It’s something we decide to do and we stick with that decision for a year. I gave up talking to Ma Sherman. I know she had been dead for about 20 years. So what? The point is I kept the resolution.” But you cheated. “Don’t tell your mother.” Here are five of my 2008 resolutions: Be thankful for what I have – areas such as weight don’t count – and stop pestering myself about what I don’t have. Read Gravity’s Rainbow so I too can posture as a literary snob. Write a newspaper story that starts out with this famous passage from Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford: It was a dark and stormy night. Eat a fried chicken gizzard without making horrible faces and even worse jokes. No more smart mouth about Culpeper County Schools being so broke they can’t pay attention. Why the system is broke, however, remains free game.