Dear George,
I make the same boring resolutions every New Years: exercise more and lose some weight. I never follow up on these. However, now that I am a really old person, I am realizing that I have less time to improve in all the ways I want to improve. So I am working on a more extensive list. Here is how it looks so far.
7000 Steps. I was really excited to discover recently that my cell phone records my number of steps. I immediately began checking at the end of the day. According to my AI chatbot, 6,000-8,000 steps is the recommended goal for persons in their eighties. I’ve been doing about 5,000, so I am going to try to get up to 7,000 this month (then to 8 if I am successful).
Play more with Iko. When our NOLA family visited for Christmas, they brought along Iko’s Shih Tzu brother, L’il Paws. With only us, Iko sleeps about 20 hours a day. But with another dog he was awake and alert lots of the time. I need to entertain Iko more. We can take more walks and wrestle more. (This will increase my steps as well.).
Battle the cockroaches. We’ve had cockroaches in our kitchen for many months. At first I found them sort of amusing and considered them my night-time friends. But then they destroyed the electrical system in our expensive stove and they immediately became my enemies. The exterminators are coming next week, but I’ve tried to step up our sanitation practices in the meantime.
3.8 Wordle. I have played the daily New York Times Wordle game about a 1000 times. You get 6 guesses to figure out a 5-letter word, and so far my average solution has been in 3.9 guesses. I’m sure I can do better, but 3.8 might be my optimal goal.
Learn the Charleston. I’ve been suffering the doldrums ever since they cancelled line dancing at my fitness center. Recently I’ve been watching YouTube videos which teach solo Charleston dance steps. This is another of my January goals.
Be more poetic. I’ve been doing poetry workshops at OLLI for at least seven years, and I spend a lot of time writing poetry. My main problem is that I’m not in the least bit poetic. My poems sound like the instruction manual for our new refrigerator — factual and concrete, not the least bit emotional or imaginative. I will try to change, but I am less optimistic about this resolution than any other.
Tackle the clutter. We have lived in our house for over 50 years, accumulated a lot every year, and rarely got rid of anything. Consequently it is difficult to move around in our basement and attic. Closer to hand, my “office” is utter chaos. I never try to clean it up because of the magnitude of the task, but I the time has come.
Be less bossy. Both Katja and I are first-born children, so we grew up dominating younger siblings. However, this results in power struggles between the two of us since with operate with different rules for household and married life. I will try to ease up, and she probably will too.
This is my plan, and I am enthused about it. By first I need to take a nap.
Love,
Dave
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