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Christmas has come and gone, leaving just New Year’s Eve on the horizon as the last holiday and last hurrah of 2023.

2023 was some year, wasn’t it?

Moving on.

Since resurrecting this column for the Austin Daily Herald from my days with the Huron Plainsman, I’ve often talked jokingly about the validity of New Year’s Resolutions.

Namely, we make resolutions and then promptly ignore them.

We’ve all made resolutions at one time or another: Lose weight, eat better, exercise more, spend less money, etc and etc.

Humans, whether we individually care to admit it or not, have the attention spans of a goldfish. In this day and age of digital advances, social media and more, it makes it almost impossible to name our resolutions and adhere to them without thinking, “Ooooo, what’s that?”

It’s been a number of years since I’ve named a resolution and that’s because it’s based on prior experience. Throughout the years, I’ve made minor resolutions to be better at things like eating and each time I’m in the Culver’s drive-thru before I eat my next bag of carrots.

“But Eric, you just need to bear down and focus on your goals,” you might be saying and to that I say, I do. I’m still spending more on growing my homebrewing hobby so take that!

Realistically, I am aware I have to do better in a variety of ways. Specifically, I would like to go out and walk more and get into a little better shape that doesn’t require me to go to a gym because that just isn’t my jam.

Once, a long time ago, I did the gym thing. I was in college my freshman year and finally starting to grow into an adult rather than looking like a perpetual child for the rest of my life.

Me and a buddy at the time dove in and made daily use of the facilities on the campus of South Dakota State University and to this day it marks the longest I’ve stuck to a resolution, and admittedly I looked good because of the work.

No superstar athlete mind you, but I was fit and had at least two of the six-pack abdomen that so many people rave about.

If you know me, then you know that I didn’t stick with it for the rest of my life. I’m not in the worst shape ever, but nor am I going to run the 100-meter dash without passing out.

I think the most challenging issue with resolutions, for me anyway, is the routine needed to stick with something.

In our household, even though it’s not technically stated as a resolution, we’re going to take each Sunday morning, go out for some coffee and just sit and pursue our creative ends in order to get back on that track, all the while hoping it’s a routine we can stick with because we enjoy it.

And coffee, of course. Never underestimate the power of coffee.

Of course, maybe I’m not looking at this resolution thing in the right color of things. With the chaos of … well … everything, maybe the routine set down and established by resolutions is something we could all use.

Maybe I do need to make a resolution to make more resolutions in order to stay on top of resolutions. Maybe that’s the answer we need to dial back less on a world that nowadays seems hell-bent on ruining itself with as much fire as humanly possible.

It’s something worth thinking about I suppose.

No, I’m still not going to a gym. What’s the matter with you?!

But I will start with a fairly broader resolution that doesn’t have such a specific focus.

I will try to make the world about me a little better. Hold more doors open for people, wave to those who wave a simple greeting to me. Say “hi” to a random stranger, wish somebody a good day.

Things like that because in my estimation, there’s something to be said for aiming to be simple. By our individual actions we are not going to solve conflict tomorrow, but by our individual actions we can all take an individual step toward a collective agreement not to make our world overly complicated.