New Year’s Resolutions

I don’t make them, though they are, I’m sure, worthwhile if you have the gumption to carry them out. On the other hand, I’ve made all manner of resolutions to keep on moving forward, no matter how tired and listless I feel. There’s no choice but to do that. There’s no point in sitting around waiting to find out if something is meant to happen by design or fate.

Do you remember that old movie Stranger Than Fiction? As a writer of fiction, I enjoyed the concept of that movie quite a bit, in a which an author is writing people into existence. After her hero realizes he’s a book character, an English professor — a professor with an expertise on the phrase Little did he know… — recommends that he sit around and do nothing all day to find out how much free will he has according to the story world. Alas, a wrecking ball destroys his apartment, suggesting his deck is stacked. Rather than allowing this deterministic universe get the better of him, he chooses to live in a way he’d never allowed himself to live before. E.g., he learns to play the guitar and falls in love. Of course, this being an old movie, spoilers don’t matter, right? Ultimately, he chooses to live the purpose he was written for and sacrifice his life to save a little boy.

The author realizes that she’s unwittingly become a monster and decides that it would be wrong to kill off a man who’s willing to sacrifice his life for others. Therefore, she changes the ending of her story, despite that it ruins the great artistic aesthetic of the work. Movies like this are rare, which is why it stuck with me. It’s philosophical, it’s fundamentally pro-life, it’s funny, and it has a happy ending.

But mostly, I don’t want to be the person who waits for fate to bring her a wrecking ball. For that reason, I should make resolutions, but I’m sorry; I’m just too busy. My list is already full. If fate, that is, God, wants me to do more, he’s going to have to make that clear.

On the other hand, it’s the tradition to have a New Year’s song, which is, fatefully, whatever comes on the radio as the clock strikes midnight. Who listens to the radio these days? We used to in the car on the way back from Albuquerque after our New Year’s Eve movie (LOTR and The Hobbit trilogy kept us going for a lot of years.) I do listen to the radio, though. I have a radio app on my phone. To stay awake, we were watching a movie called Alpha (highly recommend). As it approached midnight, I put in my earbuds and tried to find a channel that wasn’t playing ads. My husband had fallen asleep despite the film, and it was obvious I had to find a song on my own.

Finally, just before it was too late, I clicked on a Tejano station, which began to play Un rinconcito en el cielo. I smiled at the accordion intro. You see, when I first explored Norteño by listening to the Mexican stations coming out of Albuquerque, that song had taken my breath away. I fell in love with the accordion, and there was no going back. This song was how it started, and now I can play it on my very own Gabbanelli. I’m happy and grateful my New Year song is this one. It puts a positive spin on my year. This might sound superstitious to some people, but it’s really not. It’s a game, and not so very different from choosing a word to be the theme of the year, except I let the radio choose it for me. Whatever the case, I must find inspiration in it. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to find inspiration in all songs. I cringe when I consider my New Year song could have been from a country station if it hadn’t been playing ads. Maybe if Garth Brooks sang Standing Outside the Fire it might be inspirational. But what are the odds of that? Then again, what are the odds of music existing at all unless there’s a creator? I don’t know. It’s kind of difficult to create a set of odds with an infinite God as the one given.