New Year's Resolutions

I can't find it anywhere, but I'm sure I've posted the GKC essay on New Year's Resolutions somewhere before. He says that the object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year; it is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

This seems spot on to me, and I enjoy making and keeping (with various success) New Year's resolutions more with each passing year. Among others, here's what I have for 2015:

1) Iron my pants. 2015 is the year I will turn 30, which I suppose means that I am officially an adult. And adults probably need to get up early enough and somehow suffer through the extraordinary inconvenience of locating and plugging in the iron to iron their wrinkly shirts and pants. If I were feeling particularly ambitious I could just iron my clothes after they come out of the dryer, but maybe we'll save that one for 2016. Anyhow, if you see me with a wrinkled tie, shirt, or pants in 2015, please remind me that I am failing in my New Year's resolution. And then say something to make me feel properly ashamed.

2) Learn how the boy's car seats actually work. This one is from J. I asked her a few days ago whether she had any New Year's resolutions that she was thinking of for me, and she answered that "I think it's sort of dangerous to make suggestions like that for someone else." And I told her "Yes, but if you don't give me a New Year's resolutions the it would be rude of me to give you all the good ones I came up with for you." The car seat resolution is a good one. Whenever I have to put a car seat in or take it out of the car I inevitably bring a webby, buckly, half-knotted mess back to her to figure out for me. If she were ever gone when I needed to switch a seat or if something were to happen to her, the boys would be in trouble.

3) Get up a half hour earlier. The hour and a half to two hours that I have before the boys get up is the time when I get done all the things that I would usually resolve to do on New Year's--reading, exercising, balancing the checkbook, writing, translating. But 6:00 to 7:30 goes by too soon...I'm going to aim for 5:30 this year.

4) Learn how to cook two more meals decently well. Because if J were ever gone for a week or if something happened to her, the boys would probably want to eat something besides pancakes and Spanish rice.

5) Ask people more questions. The people with whom I have the best sorts of conversation and the most natural social grace are the sorts of people who are constantly asking me (and everyone else) genuinely interesting questions. And the people with whom conversation is a either a mild bore or an outright challenge tend to redirect any social traffic back towards statements about themselves.

In the spirit of Resolution 5, does anyone have any Resolutions of their own that they'd like to share?