What are you prepared to do now?

Sean Connery, playing Jim Malone, asks Eliot Ness that question as he's dying in the lawman's arms in The Untouchables. It takes a dramatic moment, in life and the movies, to bring about real change. As the new decade sputters to life, you hear talk of resolutions and consider some of your own.

I could stand to lose that stubborn fifteen and might actually give it a go. My body, being infinitely smarter than I, will immediately sense any reduction in calorie intake and slow the metabolism to a crawl. 

When you've shed so many bad behaviours, parting with the few that remain is damn near impossible. And why on January 1?

The year is not a purely invented human measure like, say, base ten. Your 30th birthday has no special significance but  you're convinced it does because we divide by ten. And this being a new decade-- I'm practicing calling it 'twenty-ten' as opposed to 'two thousand-ten'-- the slew of year-end and best-of lists is endless. The temptation to consider self-improvement is turned up a notch.

So I ask myself, what are you prepared to do now? It may be somewhat artificial, but without goals life can get aimless in a hurry.

I'm going to risk annoying, and possibly alienating, my friends with this relentless self-promotion.

I will forgo any more mention of Tiger's travails.

I am going to get this book published.

An excerpt:

It’s a new year and for some mysterious reason, we believe this erases fate’s slate and revives our chances. Everything old is new again. The newspapers are glutted with ads for fitness centers and diet regimens. Resolutions still have that new car smell. Other more practical individuals may have been seen returning size 36’ waist pants for 38’s just today but why embarrass that unnamed slob? Perhaps you too have noticed that 36’s are just not made as roomy as they once were.

            2007. This is the year. 

From Rub of the Green by Brock Walsh

To read the complete introduction, go to the post Always Tomorrow