New Year’s Resolutions

Both boys arrived sick for the holidays. Both were better within a day, two at the most. Youth? Vitality? Good immune systems? All of these, I’m sure. My older son has since returned to Japan and his Tokion magazine; we miss him terribly. My younger son sleeps in and is a flurry of flailing arms and legs as he crashes through the house with friends, a large college sophomore, opinions at the ready, inconvenient and grand.

My wife and I remain sick, struggling out of bed each morning, staring at one another, resting forehead against forehead for support, coughing, waiting for the plague to lift.

Resolution One: Either become younger and improve my immune system, or get a flu shot.

You have an advantage over me. I’m writing this column days before 1/1/2000, but you’re reading it days after and know what happened on New Year’s Eve. Hopefully nothing much at all. When I was quite young, I remember calculating how old I’d be in 2000. I was never fond of subtraction. I was challenged by the math and the concept that I’d be 53.

2000 has finally arrived, and I’m still not fond of subtraction. As for my age, well, that’s an ongoing struggle.

Resolution Two: Make peace with 53 and subtraction.

Though newspapers and networks were fully staffed and ever vigilant on New Year’s Eve, I hope they found themselves reporting mostly on each other while wondering why there wasn’t much news at all save our quotidian human dichotomies of hate and love, greed and sacrifice, decline and growth, death and birth.

I think fondly of my forebears who knew nothing of telephones, radio, TV and two-byte date-subtraction anomalies. Do you really think that our Founding Fathers would have been able to create a timeless Constitution if there had been TV coverage?

Resolution Three: Banish Y2K to obscurity, decrease paranoia by never listening to news programs that lead with chaos and mayhem, and never, ever listen to talk shows – not even those on NPR.

And what about my weight, you ask? Every year I resolve to lose the 10-pound guest who arrived unexpectedly, when I was 35, during that excessively indulgent winter of ’81. He has refused to leave and worse, if I’m not mistaken, has been putting on weight himself. I’ve tried reducing him, losing him, reconditioning him, reconstituting him – I’ve even tried forgetting all about him - but he always shows up again each morning and evening when dressing and undressing, and he’s impossible to forget when climbing stairs or working around the house.

Resolution Four: Try relocating my 10-pound guest to a different zip code.

Schooled by the likes of Warren Buffet, I bought the stocks of good growth companies and stuck with them. When some of my stocks dropped precipitously in ’95, I resolved to be more diligent. By ’96 even mutual fund volatility was more than my stomach could bear, and I resolved to find an expert whom I could trust. While stock market volatility is worse than ever, at least now I have someone to talk to: Sleep and investments are doing much better. I recently heard - without malice, I assure you - that Buffet may lose money in ’99.

Resolution Five: Stick with my broker and strive to ignore business news.

After my wife and I moved to Benicia a little more than a year ago, I decided to create "The Benicia Review" as a journal of community arts, history, literature and people. Support has been great. You’ve seen references to it in my tagline, and you may have noticed that the name has changed to "Carquinez Review" to reflect more of our interesting region. You may even be wondering where the heck the first issue is. After all, I’ve been talking about it long enough, don’t you think?

Resolution Six: Publish the Spring 2000 issue before baseball’s opener.

Finally, there’s this column. It started in July and has been a struggle and fun ever since. I’ve shared experiences and views with you, and some of you have told me what you’re thinking and feeling. But I do hope that in the coming year more of you will take the time to express your views through the Herald, your unique hometown newspaper: It’s a rare opportunity that you have.

Resolution Seven: Always remind everyone to write, and when they scoff at the suggestion for more reasons than I can count, encourage them again.

- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.

Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com  

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