What you need to do in 2024

THE NEW YEAR is time for you to shape up (Shutterstock).

One of the biggest clichés of January is the New Year’s resolution thing. Quitting smoking. Losing weight. Stop procrastinating. Clearing out the clutter. Stop being so negative. And on and on.

The problem with making resolutions and keeping to them is well, just so very hard. And then you feel guilty and/or feel like what’s the point of self-improvement anyway?

The way I have whipped that is that I now make New Year’s resolutions for other people. That way I don’t feel like a honyocker since it’s someone else’s failure. So, in that spirit, here are Outward Bound Resolutions for the New Year.

• Stop making complaints without offering (or participating in) some sort of solution.
• If you are an elected official, stop leaving the meeting halfway through or abstaining every week (you know who you are!).
• Stop disregarding or ridiculing everything said by someone else just because they voted red (or blue) and you voted blue (or red). Your own party has screwed up plenty of times.
• Stop thinking you look like a mutt. Years from now you will look at a photo of yourself from 2023 and say, “Hey … I was kind of pretty/handsome back then!”
• When in line at the market or fast food counter, get your money out before the clerk says “That’ll be $15.72.” As you fumble around in your purse or wallet, the people behind you are thinking, “Did this loser think everything here was free? It didn’t occur to him or her that stuff has to be paid for?”
• Don’t try to pass off your scruffy mutt as a “therapy dog” or “emotional support pet” in the restaurant. Everybody knows what you’re really doing, and you are disrespecting people and hounds that are in a legit service relationship.
• Asking for six different samples of ice cream flavors is just wrong and brands you as a cheapskate or adolescent.
• Use your effing turn signal!!!!!!
• Refrain from reposting every ridiculous rumor you see in social media you see just in a vain effort to make you seem “in-the-know” and privy to “inside information.” It just makes you seem like a sucker. Which you probably are.
• If you are a server or clerk, don’t pretend you don’t see me. Here I am waving arms like a seaman on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and, gee, I didn’t know you wanted anything …
• One more for the waiter … don’t interrupt my conversation with my companion. Wait another five seconds. That’s why they call it “wait-er.” And certainly don’t ask me questions when my mouth is full. See sentence above.
• Turning left across six lanes of busy traffic with nine cars queued up behind makes you seem less like an optimist and more like a honyocker.
• Look up words with which you are unfamiliar.