New Year’s Resolutions…or not!

It is the new year and I feel like I need to make some resolutions.  Maybe I should just use last year’s since they would pretty much be the same; which as it turns out are pretty much the same as the last 40 years. 
Truthfully, I haven’t been able to mark any off my list.  Sure, I have to change them some because of my age.  One resolution was, “Be rich by age 30.”  I repeated this for age 40, 50, 60 and I am thinking of writing it down for age 70. 
But now I think my goal is more like, “Don’t die before age 70” or “Don’t get hip replaced until Medicare kicks in.”
There was a time when I read a book a week for nearly three years.  I call that my Renaissance, my age of enlightenment. 
Now I can’t get through the San Juan Record without having to take a nap.  My wife calls it my “Dark Ages” because she has to frequently wake me; sometimes she shakes me to make sure I haven’t died in my big-overstuffed chair.
To take these new year’s resolutions seriously I went to Google and found a quote “Do not let what you want now get in the way of what you want most!” 
Turns out what I want now and what I want most, is a Pepsi and cookie while I binge watch Jack Ryan.  So, there’s that. 
On my banking website a screen popped up and said, “We use cookies to improve performance.”  I said, “Me too!”
This time of year always give us a chance to look back and see what we did well and areas in our life we need to improve. 
Turns out that my too kind and loving wife keeps track of all the things I need to improve on; I think that her spreadsheet is a little over the top.  So, there’s that.
What I call a superior mind kicking out brilliant ideas, she calls a caffeine-induced stupor spewing out hare-brained ideas with no filter between brain and mouth and spending money. 
Her exact words were, “I think you are a hubristic chutzpah.” 
She thinks I suffer from “a cognitive bias characterized by an overestimation of my actual ability to perform a task successfully and a belief that my performance is better than that of others.” 
I was stuck on hubristic chutzpah so I couldn’t say if I agreed or not, but I was sure that I didn’t.
For example, I say let’s become a land developer and spend our meager retirement building roads and digging wells in hopes that my ship comes in. 
She says, “By all means wrap that anchor of debt around your leg and throw it overboard to see if you can swim.” 
She says tomato, I say salsa. We get along great.
I am reminded that we should not let the urgent rob the important. 
Urgent as you get older is finding a bathroom.  Important is making sure you get home in time for Jeopardy. 
I have watched reruns of Jeopardy several times and I still can’t beat Ken Jennings.
There are many urgent things in life such as checking the mail to see if I won the lottery. 
But usually, we head to the store and forget where we are going, so we go for a drive instead and I decide a Pepsi is probably a good idea no matter where I am headed, so when we get home the Pepsi has lathered up the brain neurons and I remember that we were going to the mail so we head out again and end up at the in-laws wondering why we needed to visit them.
I have figured out that to some degree we can skip the important things in life and there are no immediate consequences. 
If you skip exercising one day …no problem, just enjoy that day, eat a cookie and increase your performance.  
If you need other performance enhancing and life fulfilling ideas for you new year’s resolutions or just need a life coach, I am always happy to help. 
Just don’t sneak up on me and scare me, I could die, might be dead, or just toot…all are fight or flight responses when you get older.