• by Derek Gordon , January 4, 2010

OK. So it's the first work day of the new year, and you're digging through your email, which you let pile up over the holidays, and you're feeling your expanded waistline through your now too-tight clothes as you sit slumped over your keyboard wondering how, exactly, it became 2010 without your realizing it.

We've all been there.  Heck, I'm there now.  I was on vacation in Mexico over the holidays and even with the pressure of wearing a bathing suit in public, I still managed to grow my mid-section.  I'm pretty sure it was a combination of tortilla chips and guacamole, margaritas and being horizontal for about 12 hours a day.  I needed only to wave my hand slightly and a very slim, very fit guy would come running through the sand to my palapa with refills -- of everything. 

My first day back, I had to run over to the Levi's store and buy jeans a waist-size higher so I wouldn't be too uncomfortable when slumped over my keyboard.  It's now clear I didn't go high enough. 

Which is why, I suppose, we all make New Year's resolutions.  To reduce those guts; to get back to a pants size that feels more right.  To not slump -- over anything. 

At work, we make resolutions in the form of goals. And at my work, we've got some exciting, aggressive goals to achieve in 2010.  Which is another reason I should not be slumping.  And yet...

In California, where I live, the state legislature passes all sorts of resolutions to honor people, and holidays, and strange things like fish and bookbinders.  They pass these because they think it makes people (and fish) feel good -- and since they're incapable of passing more important things, like budgets, they get a sense that they're accomplishing something.

If you've ever received a resolution from the state assembly or the state senate or the governor, which I haven't, but friends of mine have, so I've personally born witness to such documents, you'll see the rationale for the resolution is laid out in a series of statements, each of which begins with "Whereas..." 

"Whereas, Derek was once a size 31 and is now pushing a size 34, and Whereas, he was in Mexico, in a bathing suit no less, and should have known better, and..."

You get the picture.

Once the rationale has been laid (often with a mind-numbingly long list of whereases), these resolutions end, finally, with "Therefore, let it be resolved..." at which point the thing or the person being honored finally discovers why.  They're signed by Arnold (whose last name is too impossibly long to type when you're slumping, so apologies for the lack of formality) or some lesser politician, and are very suitable for framing.

But I don't think I'm going to get one of those, so I should probably pass my own set of resolutions. In fact, I know I should.

Be positive! Make stretch goals! Conquer the world!  What would Steve Jobs do? Or Marissa Mayer and her whole gang over at Google? 

That's the ticket. I'm going to straighten my back, suck in my gut, open a new Word document and put down my first "Whereas..."

"Whereas I am now a size 34 and seek to be a more trim size 31..."

Then again, I doubt either Steve or Marissa would start with something so pedestrian.  But it is a start.  It can only get better from here.

(Happy New Year!)