Author: Steve Cavers

It’s remarkable to me that I make the same New Year’s resolution every year, and in the final moments of the year, that’s when I remember how much I really screwed up that resolution. It should be simple: eat better, excercise, read more. Technically, I suppose that’s three resolutions.

One by one, each resolution fell by the wayside — cast aside like that shirt that I thought was really cool when I saw it in the store, then turned out to be itchy and made my belly look just about as big as it really is. Cast aside just like that.

This year I’ll be smarter. This year I’m adopting resolutions that I can keep.

This year I resolve to work at a software company and occasionally eat okonomiyaki at lunch, and sometimes for dinner too, but never on the same day. (After all, there’s only so much okonomiyakiing that a person should handle in a 24-hour period.)

I also resolve to type a great many words onto the screen, but not necessarily in the same document or in any particular order.

I resolve to breathe at least several times a day.

I resolve to eat, drink, and be merry, but not Pippin. (Sorry.)

I resolve to use the word “broccoli” in at least one sentence that doesn’t involve James Bond.

I resolve to spend more money on taxes than I’d like to, and give several politicians a really good frowning.

I resolve to sing boistrously in my car when I think that no one is looking.

I resolve to go see The Return of the King at a movie theatre and re-watch The Two Towers when it comes out of video.

I resolve to only eat breakfast when I feel like it, and to feel vaguely guilty for eating a Sausage ‘n’ Egg McMuffin, should I happen to do so.

And I resolve to just be myself and not anyone else, no matter how cheap it becomes in the future to get a brain transplant.

I strongly suggest to anyone else who’s foolish enough to have read this far down the page to adopt an attainable resolution this year. Just think how good you’ll feel about yourself when December 31, 2003 rolls around and you can look back on the year and say, “Yes, this year I accomplished everything that I set out to do.” At which point, you’ll have to skulk out of the room under the glowering looks from those people who resolved to do ambitious things like getting healthy, going to the gym, and giving up smack (for example).

It’s a small price to pay for a little bit of year-end smugness.

Daylight was streaming in around the blinds when I woke up. I was late.

I got ready. The jeans hadn’t dried completely since I did the laundry last night. I put them on anyway.

Getting into my car, I noticed that the shopkeeper in the store across the street was actually in her shop. I’d never seen that before. And my car started this time.

On the bridge, I avoided three cyclists who were riding in traffic instead of the bike lane half a metre to the right, then I passed the brand-new Starbucks in the new Pivotal building. It was full.

I stopped at a dozen or so stop lights on Robson. They all turned red. I then turned left, then right, then left before parking the car in the city parkade. A worker with a white pickup was sweeping used drug paraphernalia from the corners.

As I crossed the street, two lumbering garbage trucks stopped side-by-side for a chat, like elephants at the watering hole, and a rusty van drove past with blue smoke roiling from a broken tailpipe. The produce shop where they accept returned lettuce wasn’t open yet and neither was that new Korean restaurant next door, where they had finished their new patio.

Construction workers shouted to each other from the top of the building that they built where the 7-11 used to be, and a man jumped from his car to shove a video box into the slot at Blockbuster, then I did the same. I turned left then right then left and left again and into the building and up the elevator and beeped my way into my floor and sat down at my cubicle and began to work.

Then I stopped for a few moments and wrote this before continuing with my day.

As I mentioned a while back, I no longer own a television. This has caused a very serious problem for me. There’s no way to arrange my furniture sensibly without the TV.

For a while, the corner was a gaping void — a constant reminder of the absence of my old friend. To compensate, I moved the computer into that spot. Then I moved the couch closer to the computer so I could sit on it while surfing the net. That didn’t work out, so I moved the computer back to my desk and placed Agent Q’s tree (thanks again, Q) in the corner.

Picture a tiny livingroom with an absurdly huge sofa placed diagonally so that it faces nothing but the tree in the corner. I keep hoping there will be something good on the tree, but it shows the same thing night after night. I don’t know what to do. I can’t go into that room without feeling unsettled. Definitely bad feng shui.

It’s so quiet, you could hear a menu drop.