It's that time of year when all Bloggers are obliged to write a post about their New Year's Resolutions and I don't feel able to buck that trend.
Resolutions are strange things. The very word, "resolution", somehow seems to invite failure. At what other time of the year do we set ourselves impossible goals, possibly compiling a formal list, in the expectation that failure will have utterly engulfed them within hours?
Realistically, what we are talking about could more properly be styled "goals", "aims", "aspirations", or "hopes". If you have been trying to lose weight for the last twenty years, it seems somehow unlikely that resolving to do it at the end of December is going to have more effect this year than it did in either of the last two decades. Better to take the view that you hope to lose weight, than to burden yourself with all that unnecessary resolving. Either that, or get a gastric band.
So, what are my hopes for the forthcoming twelve months?
When I rhetorically pose that question, I am clearly setting aside my desires for weight loss, dancing ability and wealth beyond imagination. This is a blog. Blog related resolutions are the utterly unsalacious limits of my pondering.
What I would like to do over the year is to get a handle on the various aspects of the technology which is at my disposal in a more consistent manner. When I started Aiblins up again, it was with the assistance of Posterous - a remarkable and remarkably straightforward blogging platform. Through its easy systems everything from the most simplistic blog (just take a look around you) to podcasting, via clipping and sharing becomes incredibly easy. As a result, I actually have a suite of sites including Aiblins itself, a link sharing site, The Aiblins Pulse and now a sort of email list site, The Aiblins Connection. My aspiration for 2011 is therefore to try to bring some sort of order to my digital life and to use my (limited) powers only for good. There is a lot of technology out there and I have spectacularly failed to use it properly. The couple of regular readers will recall that I threatened to start an Ulster-Scots podcast last year and it never quite happened. I'm not promising that it will make the cut this year, but who knows.
The problem with all of this stuff - and with resolutions in general - is time.
There just don't seem to be enough hours in the day. I can't quite understand how that could possibly be the case. As the years have gone by and our houses have become ever more crammed with labour saving technology and gadgetry, we have all seemingly become "time poor". Perhaps we are now spending much more time reading instruction manuals.
When growing up I clearly recall my mother holding down a demanding job, dealing with my brother and me (and my father, of course) and running the household pretty much single-handed. This was in the days when the height of domestic labour saving was the twin tub which has long since passed into history. If she could manage, how can our generation possibly be giving off about being rushed off our feet?
And yet we do.
So is formed the secondary resolution.
Stop moaning about being really busy and try to remember that, recession permitting, things really aren't so bad.
If that one lasts past week one, I'll be surprised. And my wife will be delighted.
So, dear reader, Happy New Year to you and your family. May 2011 bring you all that you hope for, within the confines of that which is both legal and moral.