{"id":856,"date":"2008-01-01T07:50:30","date_gmt":"2008-01-01T13:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=856"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:37:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:37:58","slug":"my-top-ten-anti-resolutions-for-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=856","title":{"rendered":"My Top Ten Anti-Resolutions for 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why start off 2008 with a laundry list of resolutions that I know I won’t keep? No, no, better to make anti<\/em>-resolutions, things that I know, absolutely without a doubt, I will never, ever do this year…<\/p>\n

1) Serve on another committee. I wasn’t just any committee member. I was a bona fide read-all-the-emails, attend-all-the-meetings, believed-I-could-actually-make-a-difference kind of committee member. I was determined to overcome my natural cynicism and play well with others. Ha! What was I thinking? Eyegal kept telling me: “Careful, Mike, you’re gonna get burned.”<\/p>\n

I hate it the way she’s right all the time. Bureaucracies, whether they be at work or church (and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference), suck.<\/p>\n

2) Mistake an automatic shower self-cleaning unit for a shampoo dispenser. I swear that’s what it looked like, but then again I am pretty nearsighted (maybe I should consider LASIK). But after I pressed the button, the dang thing starting beeping like a garbage truck in reverse and spritzing me with ammonia. The upside: it was the cleanest I had been in a long, long time.<\/p>\n

3) Take it for granted that the Crimson Tide has a game in the bag. This should go without saying, but for Pete’s sake, Louisiana-Monroe? That infamous weekend (my birthday<\/em>, mind you), I comfortably headed out of town to a deep-in-the-woods B&B with Eyegal where there would be no internet or TV. No problem, I thought; we’ll hang fifty or so on the Warhawks, and I can read about the rout in the paper when I get back into town Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, my cell phone still worked. That evening, I got a text message from Number Three Son who attended the game with his grandfather: “We lost.”<\/p>\n

Lost what? Your sanity? Tell me something I don’t already know. A second later, I received another text message from Number One as he sat dejectedly in the student section at Bryant-Denny: “Happy Birthday from the Crimson Tide.” Then it dawned on me–and then I lost mine.<\/p>\n

How low can you go? Lo-Mo, that’s how low.<\/p>\n

4) Run two days in a row. My back just can’t take back-to-back asphalt-pounding sessions anymore. The three Rs: Rest, Recover and Relax are now my mantra. It’s sad, yes, but good grief, it’s 2008 not 1984, so I need to get over it and move on.<\/p>\n

5) Not take a real vacation. Aside from short weekend getaways and trips to visit family, I haven’t taken a real holiday in nearly three years. I need at least a week off in some far away place. Any suggestions? And no, Hal, I’m not talking Dollywood.<\/p>\n

6) Do an early morning workout consisting of 2 x 1600, 2 X 800, 4 x 400, 4 x 200 repeat intervals on the Grissom High School track. See #4 above.<\/p>\n

7) Teach a Sunday School class. I’ve taught one for the past four years–and loved it for the most part–but I’m tired, and the well is a little dry. There’s a time to teach and a time to be taught. But looking around at the increasingly shallow offerings of my own Church of Christ tradition, who’s going to do the teaching? Thank God for other tribes of Christians, quality blogs (yes, there are some if you look hard enough) and Amazon.com.<\/p>\n

8) Engage in another debate with an atheist online or anywhere else. Been there, done that. It’s pretty much useless. Everybody operates on faith anyway (although many atheists will never admit it), and nobody ever changes their mind. Live and let live, I say. Let’s both just agree to not commit anymore mass murder in the name of what or whomever, get on with our lives and try to make the world around us a little better.<\/p>\n

9) Use the phrase “Which is better, Alabama or Auburn?” instead of “Which is better, one or two?” when I grow bored of doing refractions day after day. The remakes on those glasses were real killers.<\/p>\n

10) Take the people (especially my family) and the small moments of pleasure that are a part of each day for granted. I would suggest you not do that either. After all, you never when ol’ Father Time will say, “Enough is enough, already!”<\/p>\n

And those, Fusioneers, are my Top Ten Anti-Resolutions for 2008. Feel free to share a few of your own.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why start off 2008 with a laundry list of resolutions that I know I won’t keep? No, no, better to make anti-resolutions, things that I know, absolutely without a doubt, I will never, ever do this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,33,36,48,1,46,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama-crimson-tide-football","category-churches-of-christ","category-eyes","category-family","category-general","category-holidays","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9495,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/9495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}