Now that I’m 49, and getting a closer look at 50, I’ve decided that I’m making some changes. I don’t want to become set in my ways. I want to stay young and open to new experiences. I thought I’d start by just listing a number of changes I’m going to make.

1. I’m not doing my laundry every Sunday any more. I’ve done that for years. From now on, I might do it late on Tuesday, if I like. Or some other time. It’s really up to me and how I feel at the moment and whether or not I have any clean underwear left.
2. Now that I’ve got the ball rolling, here’s another change I’m going to make. I’m switching dry cleaners. The one I’ve been with always puts cardboard inserts in my collars, and no matter how I complain, they won’t stop. So I’m quitting them.
3. Speaking of quitting, from now on, if I don’t like the book I’m reading, I’m quitting it. No more reading all the way through to the end out of some misguided sense of responsibility. It’s my life, and I’m running out of time in it, so now either it’s good or it’s gone. In fact, I’ve already started on this one. Goodbye, “Light in August” by William Faulkner. I’m halfway through you and I still don’t really know what you’re about and now I see that I don’t care enough to ever find out.
4. If I want the fries, I’m ordering the fries. Finito.
5. But I’m not ordering some pre-bundled “meal” that comes with a soda, because I don’t want the soda.
6. I’m not voting for Democrats any more just because they’re Democrats. Now, I just might not vote for them. (I’m still not voting for Republicans, though.)
7. From now on, I am under no obligation to watch everything I’ve DVRed. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at some point to record “American Pickers,” but now I’m deleting it.
8. Same goes for my Netflix queue. Yes, their recommendation succeeded in convincing me to put the Bulgarian comedy in my queue. But they can’t make me watch it.

I will be adding more to this list as time goes by. (Or I won’t. It’s up to me.)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.