Resolving to, well, not resolve ...

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, this is all I have to say: I may as well just make a resolution to break my resolutions within a week. Two, if I'm feeling really motivated -- and stick all of the Christmas candy in the bottom of the freezer in the cold garage where I won't be tempted to snag a Frango mint here and a Russian teacake there.

That's not to say that I don't see the benefit of making resolutions; I just think that people tend to place too many expectations on edicts made up against a deadline -- and, more often than not, while submerged in champagne or diving headfirst into a margarita. I'll admit that I'm guilty of doing it. (Case in point, and I quote, from Jan. 5, 2010: Therefore, I am amending my resolution to blog every day for the rest of this week, and then at least once a week for the rest of the year. There. Done. It's in writing.)

Last I checked, it was still October 2009 here in Taking Chances-ville.

And I'm not even going to mention what I said about exercising.

So here we are, at the beginning of 2011, and I am thinking about my resolutions. Scratch that. My goals. That sounds far more reasonable. I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm going to do this and this and this because face it, I'm human. I get lazy. I get tired. I order pasta swimming in alfredo sauce when a little voice in my head is telling me to get a salad. I tell that voice to shut the hell up -- and offer it a bite of cheesecake.

And, most importantly, I choose my son over cleaning, over exercise, over just about everything. Collin is my priority. And because of that, there are days when I don't even get the laundry folded, let alone accomplish elective items on my to-do list. In the last 19 months, I have learned to work around being a mom. That is my No. 1 job, and I have had to adapt and become more flexible when it comes to other things. The world will not implode if the dishes aren't washed, and most stores have a 45-day return policy. Sometimes, things just have to wait. Not that I'm complaining, though. I'll go to my grave as a Type A control freak, but I have relaxed in some ways.

Because of that, my goals for 2011 are feasible in the long run. I don't have to check them off my list by next week, or even next month. Even being on the path toward accomplishing these things will make me happier, healthier, and hopefully wiser. And they are:

1. Getting back to my wedding weight by the time I leave for Maui. That is two months and six days of potential torture, but hey, I did this to myself, and long before I had kids, too. I rocked South Beach through the late summer and fall, and was down about 21 pounds. And while I hadn't gained any weight during my last visit to the Wii Fit (and I am not saying how long ago that was other than that there were gifts under the tree) I am pretty sure that pecan pie and peppermint bark aren't mainstays of a low-carb diet.

I don't regret falling off the wagon over the holidays because, seriously, it's the best food of the year (two words: egg nog) but now I am atoning for my sugary sins. I wasn't happy with how I looked when we went to Hawaii last year, so I am making the effort. It is going to be hard, but I think I can pull it off. In the long run, I would like to lose another 21 pounds on top of the 19.5 I need to get to by March. Away from the kitchen and back to the Wii I go.

2. Organizing and cleaning out the garage. I have been saying I would do this for, oh, five years, but now it's getting more necessary. We can't even think about having another child until we have somewhere to put it. Ha. That means our study and the storage space it provides will be gone in 60 seconds, or more like 17 hours, if we're talking about labor. Our garage is currently a cesspool of old newspapers, boxes of crap from college, too-small clothes and way too many cardboard boxes that I never seem to get rid of. How exactly did I used to park my car in there?!

3. Getting out and doing something fun with Collin at least twice a week. Having a job now makes it harder to do activities during the day, but the deadline for my column is shifting to the evening (so it's online the following morning) and I am hoping to have a bit more leeway. Regardless, it's all about balance. We are members of the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, the Kidsquest Museum in Bellevue and have access to the Pacific Science Center, so I want to take advantage of those things, in addition to getting back into swimming lessons and going to gymnastics in Auburn with friends. It's fun for me, and most importantly, it's fun for him.

4. Making headway on my writing. That includes catching up on this blog -- I plan to write every day in January, just as I did for the first half of November, but I won't freak out if I miss a day or two. And furthermore, with the exception of writing and posting the first part of a "Lois and Clark" vignette based on an infamous episode of "Friends" and writing a whole page of my original novel, I didn't do much this year. I have said before that I think my lack of inspiration (and, if I'm being honest, motivation) has a direct correlation to no longer seeing looking to writing as a therapeutic exercise, and I also think that my lack of uninterrupted time to just sit down and write is a big factor. I used to write in my downtime at work or late at night in the days before 2 a.m. became my only "me time" of the day and I was doing multiple things at once.

I not only want to write the full-length L&C story I mapped out long ago, and finish my G&L story (my best and most in-depth work to date), but I want to start working toward submitting something to a publishing house. It has always been a dream of mine to be a published author, so why not try? I see books in Borders and think "yikes, I could write something way better than this!" To do that, I'm not afraid of hard work -- or rejection.

I realized my dream of working at a major metropolitan newspaper, and now I am living my desired life of a work-at-home mom, so I am excited to take on this project. Who knows? Maybe I'll have an actual resolution for 2012: to make the New York Times best seller's list. ;)