The Good Life
A New Year resolution to give up snoring is easier to make than to keep.
Greg Dixon
Though I write this in December, I’m pretty sure that by the time you read it, I’ll have already broken my only New Year resolution. You see, I have promised myself I’ll give up snoring.
Sadly, even my feeble powers of prognostication can detect that my future self will fail at this. That means by now – which is to say by the time you read this – someone, who shall remain nameless, and possibly sleepless, has informed me that, although I had resolved to give up snoring and had believed I’d given up snoring, I have not given it up at all and, consequently, have been sawing away with loud abandon for all of 2019, albeit the year only a week or so old.
This is the trouble with New Year resolutions. They’re easily made after several glasses of something with hints of grapefruit and bold, grassy notes, and then easily broken, especially when sleeping off several glasses of something with hints of grapefruit, etc, while lying on your back with your mouth open.
And so another year will begin in disappointment.
I selected snoring as my New Year resolution because it seemed the most realistic and achievable choice when I considered, for about 10 seconds, all the other things I should give up. Still, I suppose I’d best find another resolution in advance of breaking the one I’ve chosen.
I could perhaps give up on one of my most unappealing traits since leaving Auckland: a smugness about leaving Auckland.
This might be forgivable, or at least overlooked, if it weren’t for the fact that, like my snoring, it has been so loudly expressed. On too many occasions, and on this page, too, I have referred to Auckland as “the shining traffic jam beside the Waitematā ”, and compared it unfavourably with the beautiful, tranquil, green and gentler place I live in now, a place where the only jam is found in the cupboard or, after opening, in the fridge.
Perhaps in 2019 I should be less self-congratulatory about escaping. But don’t hold your breath – unless, of course, you happen to be sitting in a shining traffic jam beside the Waitematā.
A second possible resolution is not to repack the dishwasher after Michele has been near it. It would be fair to say that Michele’s spatial sense is, well, different from mine. It would also be fair to say Michele views my repacking of the dishwasher as a form of fascism. I could resolve to stop repacking the dishwasher, but only if she resolves to stop referring to me as Hitler under her breath – breath she won’t be holding, and neither will I.
Another of my sins is pride. I suffer from it when standing on my enormous lawn when I’ve just mowed it to within an inch of perfection. I suffer from it, too, when thinking of our increasingly exciting garden here at Lush Places, and all the homegrown produce it puts on the table. And, of course,
I’m proud when I look at my lamb Xanthe and see that I’m raising the greatest sheep who ever lived. Nothing really wrong with any of that, I reckon, but perhaps I should resolve not to post quite so many prideful micro-brags about it on Instagram.
I have many worse faults and foibles that could go: being too swift to anger or to judgment; jealousy; not shutting up and listening; the habit of hogging the remote. But I think I should choose something, well, more cheery, more life-affirming. Rather than trying to stop doing something bad, I should pick a new New Year resolution that adds something good. Perhaps it might simply be telling Michele “I love you” more often than once every five years. But then I’d have to put up with her usual reply: “Good.”
I think I’ll have to sleep on that one. Or, as seems more likely, snore on it.
Perhaps in 2019 I should be less selfcongratulatory about escaping Auckland.