Did you manage to keep one of last year's New Year Resolutions

[ssweetpea]

I did.

This time last year I decided to do some study just to prove that I could do it.

I now have Certificate in General Horticulture from SIT (20 NCEA credits at level 2 and 20 at level 3).

I won't mention the one about losing weight

[Calliope]

I did.

This time last year I decided to do some study just to prove that I could do it.

I now have Certificate in General Horticulture from SIT (20 NCEA credits at level 2 and 20 at level 3).

I won't mention the one about losing weight

Congratualtions. Now that you have proven you can do it, are you going to continue? I hope so.
as for the weight - If you are like me, stress kills the appetite so more advanced study may be the answer.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

I NEVER, EVER make New Year resolutions.


That way, I cannot ever break New Year resolutions.....

[ssweetpea]

Congratualtions. Now that you have proven you can do it, are you going to continue? I hope so.
as for the weight - If you are like me, stress kills the appetite so more advanced study may be the answer.

Unfortunately stress has a opposite effect on me, it is what caused the weight gain in the first place.

I am tossing up about further study. To take it to a higher level will cost thousands I don't have and I have enough debt. Also I really should look for a job that pays.

If Sp1 wants to head away from home to 'vasity in 2013 not only will the amount she can borrow not cover the cost of living away from home but we will lose Working For Families and Sp1 won't qualify for a student allowance either before Sp2 turns 16.

[Alicat]

My New Year's Resolution a few years back was to try more of teh Marlborough and Hawkes Bay wines.

We had a glass of wine with dinner most nights and tried a lot of different wines - mainly sauvs. We kept a list and marked them out of 10. The Hawkes Bay wines came out on top for us. I actually managed to keep my NY Reso that year.

2011 was just to get through each day in one piece.

2012 is the same - take one day at a time and to try and walk away from the crap. That, and to sit down with a friend and drink that $180 bottle of French Champagne. Now that ACC has reversed it's own decision made 15 months ago and are now covering the knee injury, surgery and lengthy rehab - maybe I have an excuse to celebrate?

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

    From SFGate.com

12 stupidly easy resolutions for 2012

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, January 04, 2012

You want to exercise more, eat better, read more books? Spend more time with your kids, get more sleep and cook more delicious meals at home? Wonderful. Have at it. Me, I'm going a little esoteric, a little vibrational this fine year of our apocalypse. It just seems appropriate. Starting with:

1. EXTRA MOANING

I know people who hold it all in. I know people who never make a peep, who are far too quiet with their expressions of joy and bliss and yum, who think any sort of yelp at the exquisite pains/pleasures of this life is for hippies and porn stars and obnoxious teenagers who won't shut the hell up and turn down that goddamn hippity hoppity musical nonsense.

I feel terribly sad for these people, in no small part because I used to (sort of) be one myself. What a silly way to go through life. What a relief to not have to be that way anymore. I blame Burning Man. I resolve to keep it going, more than ever.

2. WILDER SIGHING

Heavy sighing is when you think the world is a miserable madhouse of suffering, violence and very little else. Sad sighing is when you think it's just tragic what happened to poor little Kim Kardashian and, oh my goodness, look what's happening to all the puppies and the honeybees and the supercute baby seals.

Wild sighing, on the other hand, is a different beast entirely. More guttural, raw, emerging from just below the genitals and shooting straight up the spinal chord like liquid fire, it pours out the throat like a slow, feral grunt, like you just ate raw unicorn heart from a skewer made of porcelain hummingbird skull you now wish to thank the gods without saying a word. You know?

3. TRUER BREATHING

There's breathing, and there's breathing. There's the everyday, automatic background drudgery, the shallow, mundane inhale/exhale that you take for granted until it finally stops, you fall over in a dusty heap and the gods shrug and go back to their knitting.

And then there's other kind. There's being fully, exquisitely aware of how you're moving life force through your body, through your pores like it was vodka traversing the blood/brain barrier, like cocaine being passed around the Last Supper, like 1,000 naked angels wrapped around your body and they were squeezing you like a divine accordion made of sex and blood and really strange dreams. Choose wisely.

4. GENTLER GRIP

I do it. You do it. Everyone you know does it. We all hold on far too tightly to the things we love, the things we hate, the personal stories we're so desperately convinced of, because if you let go of them, well, what's left?

Who are you, really, without that car, spouse, haircut, job title, attitude, sneer, Facebook status, enemy, body issue, income level, family trauma, abusive relationship, broken heart, need for attention? Who are you when you soften the mad grip and realize the nature of consciousness is an ever fluxive cycle of expansion and contraction, over and over again, forever? Hint: it's not what you think. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that terrifying?

5. DEEPER PENETRATION

Penetration into what, you might ask, shifting hungrily in your chair? Penetration into the meaning. Into the soft and beckoning darkness. Past the surface of things, through the glittery BS of the popular culture, deep into to the engines and the forces that make it all go.

Penetration into the source. What is the source? Consciousness. What is consciousness? You're soaking in it, right now. How do you know? Close your eyes for a moment, sit very still, and try to imagine God and the Devil are sitting around a raging campfire making s'mores, and your heart is the marshmallow. There.

6. DRINK THE AWE

It's a brutally fast-paced, Facebooked, hypertext-drunk world, my loves, and it's just ridiculously easy to take it all for granted, to sit there and type your message into your glorious little device and attach a video and send it halfway round the world as you sip your coffee that came from 8,000 miles away and think nothing of it all, when in fact there are roughly 1,008 astonishing miracles banging around your life right this second if you just were able to realize their wobbly gifts. What a thing.

7. INVERT THE MELANCHOLY

Yes, I know, you're all jaded and wary and sick of it all. The world is corrupt, everyone's out to screw over everyone else, men are tactless pigs and women are manipulative gold-diggers and it's all enough to cast a permanent pall over everything.

Whatever. Choose that if you want to. It's certainly easy. It's also exceedingly lazy. For 2012, maybe choose to take that feeling and flip it over like it was one of those cute old novelty pens with the naked women on it, as you watch the black bathing suit slide down and reveal the naked truth of the silliness of it all. Then write me a note.

8. UP THE VIBRATION

Have you heard? Everything has a pulse. Everything has a flicker and tremor of existence, from rock to ocean, dog to docking station, politician to power drill.

Here is your choice for 2012: You can pump, kick and feed into that pulse, join forces with it to help yourself, your loved ones, the whole of the ruined and gorgeous world leap to the higher realms of consciousness, or you can remain sour and small, refusing to celebrate anything at all. You can vibrate high and helpful, or you can vibrate low and pessimistic. What's it going to be?

9. DOWN WITH ZIPPERS

On one hand, it's a hyper-pornified, revoltingly explicit, over-sexualized culture with far too easy access to smut of such low and inelegant quality it makes my classic, porn-loving heart sad.

On the other, a trembling horde of puritanical GOP and Tea Party dinkbuttons who don't know the business end of a vibrator (much less a clitoris) would like you to please return to the sexually ignorant closet of roughly 1951 and slam the door tight.

Somewhere in between, a call for a refreshingly filthy and delicious, respectful and educated, fearless and open-throated sexual awareness that is neither that, nor that. I'm working on it, eagerly, every single day. Help me?

10. OCCUPY HEART SPACE

Wait, so I'm not the only one to make a cheesy pun on 2011's favorite protest acronym? To flip it around and make it into some sort of personal self-help mantra? Oh well.

OWS was about taking up residence in the corridors of power and making joyful, egalitarian noise. OHS is about taking up residence in your own power center, feeling around in the box of your own bullsh*t and shoving out the demons of bitterness and fear, and replacing them with something resembling trust and bliss. I have no idea if I can do it. But what the hell else is worth trying?

11. APPRECIATE APPRECIATION

Everyone loves something. Gratitude abounds. I hereby resolve to wallow and soak in the sheer joy that others pump out toward the things they love and celebrate, even if it's something I find ridiculous or annoying or WTF. Unless it's destructive or hurtful, ignorant or violent, I hereby resolve to be more grateful for the whatever the hell you're grateful for. Even cats.

12. ECSTATIC STILLNESS

Do you know why many of the wisdom masters and wizened gurus of the world are always laughing? Why their eyes sparkle and they seem to beam out pure love and joy, when they often have almost nothing in terms of worldly possessions, fame or wealth?

It's because they know the secret. They know when you are fully dialed in to the moment, when you are awake and alive to your body and your life, when all senses are alive and the light illuminates everything to the point of absolute bursting, well, there's nothing else to want.

It's the sheer ecstasy of existence itself, blood pouring through, heart aflutter, eyes luminous, body pulsing, air like the finest wine, god in every breath. For 2012, far more of that, please. Join me?

______________________________________

 

Mark Morford's latest book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is available at Amazon, BN.com, and beyond.

Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is MarkMorford.com.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list, click here and remove three more.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/04/notes010412.DTL&ao=all

[Ferney]

Am going to make one now!    Not to leave the wage summary and PAYE to do until the last 'minnit'   Then I won't be up after midnight so I can mail it in the morning.
   

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[ssweetpea]

I didn't make any last year so a 100% success rate.

Nothing succeeds like a budgerigar.

I haven't decided whether to make one for 2013 - I really need to lose weight as per usual. That resolution has worked before - not.

[Crusader]

I don't make them easier. That way I don't let myself down.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

10 awesomely easy resolutions for 2014

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Tuesday, December 31, 2013

YOU WANT to exercise more, eat better, read more books? Wonderful. Have at it. Me, I’m going a little esoteric, a little vibrational this fine year of our imminent apocalypse. It just seems appropriate. Starting with:

1. Thinner membranes

You think you have a pretty good idea? You think you sort of “get” this world, with all its “facts” and “emotions” and “Large Hadron Colliders testing supersymmetric theories of kinetic particle interrelationships”? The great gurus throughout history would like a word with you. And that word is, ahem, “bullshit”.

This much we do know: The veil separating our “real” world from the parallel realms, from other potential dimensions and rarefied fields of energy, is as thin as Kleenex made out of the drunken hiccups of an embarrassed flea. But the thinnest membrane of all? It’s the one separating our collective hubris – source of all our inane wars, rabid gun fetishism and ludicrous claims on God — from the fact that it’s all a trick of light, a cosmic eyeblink, and all it takes to traverse this membrane is an honest urge to wake the hell up. You ready?


You think you know, but you have no idea.

2. Profounder bows

Once you understand the above, once you realize, somewhere deep in your bones, that the human spirit is not, as some tragically delimited neuroscientists would have you believe, just a dumb clump of gray matter spitting out rote, pre-programmed blurps, but is, rather, a fluxive pulse, a sweltering, delirious inhale and exhale of divine consciousness swooning in a permanent orgasm loop, all you can do is fall to your knees and kiss the ground about, oh, 108 times. And then take off your pants. And then keep dancing.

[size=15]3. Wiser discernments[/size]

Fascinating, brutal and more than a little lopsided piece over at Slate right now, detailing a bit of the horror that is the Mexican cocaine trade, and how so many are suffering so brutally for the silly indulgences of the American overclass.

Angry and emotionally ham-fisted, the author claims that if you ever buy cocaine, you are fully complicit in the gruesome murders of countless thousands of Mexican fisherman, police and innocents, as if it’s all that simple, as if, say, American tax dollars don’t cause far worse carnage by funding the failed War on Drugs, along with all our other vicious wars, not to mention the NSA, the drone program, CIA assassinations and Mitch McConnell’s Viagra prescription.

Do our choices as consumers matter? Absolutely. Is it worthwhile to expose all demons at play in the fields of our wanton desires and rank/blame them accordingly, before claiming that American partiers are responsible for beheaded fisherman? Maybe.

4. Juicier gasping

Has the much-discussed “pornification” of youth culture – from too-easy access to nauseating ultra-raunch on the Web, to sexting, “revenge porn” and even hookup-happy Tindr — has it all ruined the younger generations for truly skillful, soulful sexual interplay?

Put another way: Are college kids far worse at sex and even basic F2F communication than a gang of sea otters and pink flamingos thrown together in a room, blindfolded? Possibly. Can you alleviate this potential and tragic truism by knocking it off with the whining about sex and instead learning your body and the body of your lovers like Galileo learned about the moon? One guess.


Sort of a smirk, really.

5. Lighter rending

There’s a gorgeous little theory bouncing around ScienceTown right now that suggests the entire universe might very well be nothing but a complex hologram, a grand projection onto a single plane of reality (among multitudes), all fashioned by the enthusiastic pulsations of vibrating, nine-dimensional strings. Possible? It’s already been partially (and gumpily) debunked, but not before everyone who read about it experienced that deep shudder of recognition, a jolt of wonder borne of the knowledge that we are only beginning to understand the depths of what we don’t understand. PS: Shiva says “hi”.

6. Serener swipings

I see you there, frantically attacking that poor smartphone, anxiously swiping this way and that as if the Truth was in there somewhere, as if the very next Instagram/tweet/text will surely contain the Ultimate Baby Picture or the World’s Funniest Kitten or the Most Awesomest Status Update Ever, and then boom! All your anxiety will evaporate, your skin will clear up and everything will suddenly make all sorts of obvious sense.

Too bad the exact opposite is true; the more frantically you swipe, the more desperately you expect to find some sort of answer from any source that’s not the Self, the further from the Truth you get. Isn’t that always the way?

7. Slipperier inclinations

Fear continues to rule our world, alas and woe and same as it ever was. The conservative mindset in particular likes to tie its anti-everything fatalism to all kinds of willful ignorance, resulting in the weird belief that the slightest delighted dalliance in kink, vice, “perverted” sex or “alternative” relationship will only lead to the complete unraveling of society, to incest, bestiality and wanting to marry your dead grandmother.

Rarely do fundamentalists seem to realize that the “slippery slope” argument works even more beautifully the other way around: kindness breeds kindness, tolerance opens out to wonder, forgiveness leads to increased softening of the icepick heart. Ultimately, releasing your paranoid grip on how you think it’s all supposed to look, feel and taste might, just might, slide you right into the arms of easeful, open-minded joy. You think? Hey, it worked for Jesus.

8. Humbler astonishment

At the time of this writing, one of the greatest drivers in auto-racing history, a seven-time Formula One champion and winner of countless “lesser” death-defying contests, Michael Schumacher, lies in a medical-induced coma in France after suffering a traumatic head injury… from a ski accident. And he was wearing a helmet.

The morbid, almost shocking irony of the event is surreal enough to bend the mind and warp your sense of reality. How do you possibly process such bizarre occurrences? What is your bumper sticker takeaway? “You just never know”? “Carpe Diem”? I’m not sure there is such a simplistic lesson, except to say that it doesn’t matter the year, the name of the president, the state of the economy or what you think about death: the only real response to life is endless wonder, mixed with awe, shot through with gasping reverence.


Don’t be scared, honey. It’s just life.

9. Nimbler distinctions

Did you read that belief in evolution — perhaps the most obvious, verified, common sensical hunk of science in human history next to gravity, relativity and the general awesomeness of Jennifer Lawrence — has actually plummeted among Republicans, from 54 percent in 2009 to just 43 percent today?

Which is to say, more conservatives than ever are in bizarre denial of the most basic functions of nature and their own bodies, preferring to believe some bitter grandfather figure fashioned us out of cosmic Play-Doh after losing a bar bet with the Devil. Why do you think this is? Is it a sad desperation to assign the meaning of our existence to something greater and more unknowable than ourselves, so we don’t have to take responsibility or look too closely in the mirror? Is it the deeper fear that, if some people actually try to sit still and delve into that divine Self — you know, as Jesus instructed — all they’ll find is echoes and ghosts?

10. Broader conundrums

In the time it takes you to finish this sentence, 17 people will be born and eight will die. In the world. Somewhere. According to the Census, which wouldn’t lie about such things.

In related news, it appears there might very well be tens of billions of potentially habitable planets right here in our humble galaxy, with hundreds of billions more beyond, to the point that you can do nothing but gasp, and laugh, and shake your head, and feel at once both infinitesimally small and yet wildly interconnected to some grand energetic deluge of birth, life, death and rebirth, ever swirling and moving, leaping and cavorting like a giant pod of spinner dolphins acting out the Rapture.

Wait, you still think you’re way over here and those billions of planets are way out there? You still think you’re a million miles from understanding, much less being, God? You still believe in separation, the greatest lie of all? You didn’t read No.1 closely enough.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/12/31/10-awesomely-easy-resolutions-for-2014

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[ssweetpea]

I am currently (after the annual post Christmas weight gain) 7 kg lighter than I was this time last year.

I am also no longer completely unwaged.

Goals for the coming year have yet to be decided upon other than the usual of loosing more weight and finding more hours of paid employment.

[Crusader]

I lost 10 kilo's in 2013. Have a healthier lifestyle now. Goal for 2014 is that now all the lardarse is gone, to work on toning.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

15 essential New Years resolutions you still have time to make

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 2:08PM PST - Tuesday, December 29, 2015


Reminder to your soul: Do not come back as one of these.

1. Fewer cat videos, more theoretical physics.

2. Ramp up intake of efficacious inebriates/meditation techniques that successfully alleviate ongoing realization that you live in a country where the leading conservative presidential candidate is a raging, inarticulate racist troll and some people think that's just terrific.

3. (Choose any three): Marry up, ride hard, live free, eat less, exercise more, open wide, die young, dance naked, run wild, spring forward, fall apart, come together, go green, keep calm, dream/rock/carry on, power up, shut down, kiss off, be well, smile often, phone home, tune in, drop dead, stay classy.

4. Something something something, Slayer neck tattoo.


Less of the former, more of the latter.

5. Damn the doubters; continue to refer to your “game-changing”, “disruptive” startup idea as “The Uber of home pickling”.

6. Re-watch missed episodes of The Knife Show to check for extant offers on 5′ Green Jade Dragon's Lair WizardMaster™ Super Katanas for mounting above crib in baby's room.

7. Be nicer to animals, even the ones that are not cute or do not taste delicious over rice, especially those that are terribly sad about how we've ruthlessly eliminated pretty much half of them worldwide, most in the past 40 years.

8. Remix Adele's new record to sound exactly like 300 kittens screaming into a simply humongous amount of pie. Realize that's already what it sounds like. Pour bourbon, listen to new Baroness instead.


Everything that is not matter and does not emit light, gravity or electromagnetism, please explain yourself.

9. Bite more rainbows.

10. Humbly request, then outright demand, that dark matter explain itself already, because come on….

11. Three little words: Lego. Colonoscopy. Catering.

12. Register Trumpocalypse.com, divest all stocks, purchase Airstream, load with copious tequila and MDMA and yoga mats and incense and grass-fed steaks and leather, prepare for end times/freedom.


Hell yes. More of this in 2016. Obviously.

13. Cultivate compassion for those who give you the most difficulty, for those who cause the most overt harm in the world, for those who blindingly rage against Other because they lack all nuanced understanding and inclusive perspective, for they will almost certainly be coming back, most likely as baffled Tasmanian devils with contagious cancer that causes ugly facial tumors. Be kind.

14. Challenge adorable new biblical scholarship that suggests that Eve actually came from Adam's penis, not his rib. This is silly and insulting. Adam's penis created Hell, guns, war. Eve was created when the serpent dropped MDMA with the moon. I mean, obviously.

15. Fewer hoodies, more grace.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/12/29/15-essential-new-years-resolutions-you-still-have-time-to-make

[ssweetpea]

Last year's resolutions:

Improve my word processing abilities. Achieved

Learn to do tatting. Didn't get around to that.


This year:
Loose 4 kg
Further improve my word processing - get to the end of that text book in otherwords, only the last two chapters to go.
Learn to do tatting - I now have the book, the hook, shuttle and the mercerised cotton.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Crusader]

Last years resolution to get posted to Wellington - Achieved.

This year - To complete a triathlon. I need to learn how to swim for this. 

[nitpicker1]

I don't do the resolutions thing,  I make wishes instead.  I wish I didn't.