Happy New Year! What’s Your Resolution?

By Melanie P. Moore

Whether the holidays were everything you’d hoped for, nothing you’d ever hope for, or you “flew” Southwest, we’ve turned the corner to January, to a new year stretched out in front of us. New calendars are a blank slate, mostly. We’re optimistic, mostly. Then come the questions—the one question really—What’s your New Year Resolution?

I looked up “resolution” (of course I did) to see what it means. Mostly I think of the pixels on my computer screen—which is, in fact, listed in Merriam-Webster as definition 6.a. (and that’s not even the last one). What else could I do but compile a list of resolutions, one for each of the dictionary definitions.

Resolution:  the act or process of resolving, such as:

1.a. the act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones.
New Year Resolution 1.a.:  I will learn to “land the plane” in conversation, a bold departure from my run-on-sentence-rough-draft descriptions so full of detail that it’s not clear (even to me) what my point is.

1.b. the act of answering: SOLVING: 
New Year Resolution 1.b.:  I will not skip the difficult New York Times crossword puzzles (i.e. I’ll do more than just the Monday ones).

1.c. the act of determining
New Year Resolution 1.c.:  I will choose with authority my order at a restaurant (without asking what everyone else is having, without playing panicked “menu roulette” when the server looks at me, again, after everyone else has ordered)

1.d. the passing of a voice part from a dissonant to a consonant tone
New Year Resolution 1.d.: When I sing out loud, I will strive to match pitches.

1.e. the separating of a chemical compound or mixture into its constituents
New Year Resolution 1.e.: I will remember to remove the bay leaf from soup before serving.

2. the subsidence of a pathological state (such as inflammation)
New Year Resolution 2.: I will take more Aleve

3.a. something that is resolved
New Year Resolution 3.a.: I will finish this blog post

3.b. firmness of resolve
New Year Resolution 3.b.: I will finish this blog post. Seriously.

4. a formal expression of opinion, will, or intent voted by an official body or assembled group
New Year Resolution 4.: Whereas I have started it, now therefore let it be formally resolved that I will finish this blog post. (Unanimously approved by me and my shadow.)

5. the point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out
New Year Resolution 5: I will figure out where Bernadette DID go.

6. a. the process or capability of making distinguishable the individual parts of an object
New Year Resolution 6.a.: I will finish the 2,000-piece puzzle my sister started (where “started” = dumped out all the pieces and propped up the box with the picture) on my dining table at Christmas THE DAY SHE LEFT.

6.b. a measure of the sharpness of an image or of the fineness with which a device (video display, printer, scanner) can produce usually expressed as the total number or density of pixels in the image
New Year Resolution: I will stop using my dot-matrix printer for photos, especially photos I am giving as gifts. 

Happy New Year Y’all!