Perfect Excuses

The first step in a resolution is always creating the List. Listing the things we wish to change forces us to face them with a resolve that would gain us a standing ovation at a Weight Watcher’s meeting.

Examples can include:

1. Organize the laundry room, smile, take pictures, and post that picture on the class chat just to disprove being titled “Miss Congeniality” (because everybody’s gotta be good at something) in the high school yearbook. Yes, I do have some life skills. I just don’t think Susie, Chanie, and Shani will be convinced till they see the pic.
2. Smile, take a picture in front of the chaos in the overstuffed garage, then organize, declutter, and haul the bags of leftover junk to the tree lawn. Smugly wait to have the neighbors ask you when you’re moving. (Send that picture to the class chat, too.)
3. Dress your very single 25-year-old daughter in the lovely outfit you can’t afford or would never allow yourself — and drag her to every shadchan in the neighborhood and beyond, insisting that she stand next to you at your rabbi’s son’s wedding, just to prove to your mother that yes, you are doing everything possible to get her a date. Smile and… you know the routine.

Once you’ve made those lists, the challenge is to actually get things crossed off, and of course we all have the most elaborate and ingenious rationalizations for why things don’t get done.

Excuses for why? Those are exercises in creative writing at their best. I myself am president of the 2-2-2 Club. Too hot; too cold; too little; too late; too early; too humid; too much. That covers just about everything.

One of the most wonderful feelings of accomplishment comes at the end of the day when we’ve crossed off the last thing on our to-do list. Sometimes we cross off those items because we have actually accomplished them. Other times it’s simply easier to cross them off than to do them. Pick up this, drop off that, don’t forget to call Aunt Shirley, and all the other little things that clutter your day? They all go to the head of the line on tomorrow’s list.