New Year's Resolution

I don't usually make resolutions for the new year. I figure that if you need to make a resolution, you can make it anytime, so no need to wait for January 1. Also, I have not been good about keeping the resolutions I have made in the past. But this year, on December 26, we went to a memorial for Kelly, the guy pictured here, and his daughter spoke. She encouraged us all to make New Year's resolutions, because Kelly liked to make them, and he was always very excited about them, so that's a good enough reason for me. This year I will make one.

Kelly, by the way, was only 50 years old and was killed in a skiing accident, fell head first into deep snow and suffocated on the Saturday before Christmas, so the circumstances were really terrible. Kelly was a Boy Scout leader who had a lot of influence on my sons. He and I were not really close, but we were always friendly. He was very lighthearted, always laughing about something, and he once said that at his memorial he thought there should be strawberry-rhubarb pie. The church that hosted his memorial was overflowing, as was the parking lot, and there was one of the largest collections of strawberry-rhubarb pies that has ever been assembled.

So now I have to come up with a resolution. I started the brainstorming by eliminating a few possibilities. Losing weight is out. Exercising is out. Everybody makes that sort of resolution, and those are just the type of resolutions I have not kept in the past. I expanded on those ideas to exclude anything health-related, like eating more broccoli. Also, I decided that something like beating all 30 levels of Starcraft (which might have been a better resolution 10 years ago) or reading every single Christopher Moore book (which I might do anyway) would be too frivolous.

Then I started thinking about writing all this in a blog post, and it was not too much of a stretch to decide that I could have a resolution related to writing. Not  really health-related, and not completely frivolous, and something I should work on more. My last blog post was in May, related to Game of Thrones. I should get going again.

So I am resolving to write at least two blog posts per month in 2016. This one doesn't count toward January, because I am going to post it today, December 31. I really would like to write a post every week, but we'll call that an aspiration as opposed to a resolution, so a little more relaxed level of commitment. Two posts a month is probably doable; once a week, I have my doubts.

I have plans for my first 2016 post -- it involves Republicans and Machiavelli -- so that should be coming to this very site soon.