Successful resolutions need time to take hold

OFF/BEAT GLIDEWELL E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published January 1, 2002

This is the time of year when some columnists like to write cutesy columns about New Year's resolutions that they think would be appropriate for public figures.

Even as I write this, computer keys are clacking across the country suggesting that Britney Spears resolve to take singing lessons, Osama Bin Laden look for a better tailor and Pat Robertson try to find a clue.

What they won't be writing about is their own desperation: the need to fill space during a season in which, relatively speaking, little is happening.

There is a war on, but information about it comes in carefully crafted dribs and drabs thought by the trusting to protect lives and national security and by the suspicious to provide cover for a host of misdeeds.

The nation struggles to recover from the greatest manmade disaster in its history, but the struggle is so painfully evident and the wound so bloodily raw that we are, or in some cases should be, reduced to numb silence.

The truth is that holidays are slow news times because the people who make news try to live something approaching normal lives for a few days rather than providing "events" and news conferences to feed the ever-hungry information beast.

And it is the same form top to bottom.

Nobody really wants to launch a major political move in local government during this time of year because they know they will come under harsh criticism for crossing the imaginary holiday honeymoon line, and that the people from whom they are seeking a response probably will ignore them.

Even Port Richey and Crystal River go relatively quiet.

Jail inmates lose the impetus to complain about the food.

Drivers come to grudgingly accept that traffic tieups are as great a tradition in the Tampa Bay area as bad professional sports teams.

Politicians ooze good will, and everyone goes through a brief honeymoon period before standing up for the next wave of attacks against -- and from -- them.

On a personal note, this is the time of year when many of us make resolutions to get rid of bad habits and adopt good ones.

(It is also, ironically, that people make resolutions to seek publicity as soon as the lull is over with, rather than now when it might be had for the asking. Tomorrow my phone will ring off the hook with calls from people who have resolved to gain publicity for their business, causes or histories of alien abductions. Right now I can't even get a telephone solicitor selling burial lots.)

As a person who has acquired, discarded and reacquired numerous bad habits and even more numerous pounds over the years, I do have one small piece of advice.

Unless your resolution had something to do with imminent risk to life and limb -- like not driving drunk any more -- postpone it.

For those who indulge in traditional celebrations, this is not a day to give up coping mechanisms.

If you have a hangover from drinking too much, your body might be craving foods you promised not to eat. If you already have a headache, this might not be the best possible day to deal with nicotine withdrawal.

If you think you are feeling guilty about things you probably did or said last night, either you really said them, in which case you need whatever crutches you are used to, or you just think you did, which means you could probably use a little help getting through the paranoid willies.

So, unless you have seriously committed yourself to a 12-step program to deal with your legal vice of choice (Off/Beat never recommends participating in any illegal vice), consider giving yourself a 30-day grace period and enforcing the same resolution beginning Feb. 1.

All I know is that it has worked for the two resolutions, out of hundreds, that I have kept in my 57 years: quitting smoking in 1986, the same year that I resolved not to date super models for the rest of my life.

It's been tough, but picking the right day to start helped with both.

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