New Year's Resolutions
Most people surveyed do not make promises to start 2009

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola, Jim Tiffin and Karen Francis
Staff writers

Apparently a lot of local folks have made a resolution to not make New Year’s resolutions.

The Independent talked with a number of people recently, and most of them agreed with a man who hurried by and claimed he had nothing to do with New Year’s resolutions. “I made a resolution not to make resolutions,” he said.

More than a dozen other shoppers agreed that as great as New Year’s resolutions seem, they are too difficult to keep for a lifetime or even a year.

Make that one month for B.K. White.

“I think they were meant to be broken,” White said, who nevertheless admitted she “always” made resolutions. The new year begins with a “gung-ho attitude” that you are going to fulfill promises made to yourself, she joked, and then February comes along. Before you know it, she added, the entire year has slipped by and it’s December again.

Tessa Smith, who was enjoying a girls’ afternoon out with a friend, said she hadn’t made any resolutions this year.

She believes New Year’s resolutions are difficult to keep because we live in an instant gratification society, and people want instant gratification even with themselves.

When changes don’t happen instantly, she said, people become disappointed and abandon their resolutions.

Russel Stanbery, of Tacoma, Wash., who stopped in Grants to make purchases before returning to teach in Arizona, said making resolutions is setting yourself up for failure.

“I don’t bother with resolutions, it’s a bad way to go about life,” he said. “You try to do something and you’re not able to do it, it seems to me you are setting yourself a goal to fail.”

Stanbery said setting resolutions is a wasted cycle of making promises that you don’t keep.

“If I want to do something, I just do it. I don’t need a special occasion, or a special time of year to just do it,” he said.

There were, however, a few brave souls who admitted to making New Year’s resolutions this year:

• John Montoya said he is going to try to lose a little bit of weight with his new Wii Fit, a fun video fitness game from Nintendo that includes different activities like yoga and strength exercises.

• B.K. White’s resolution for 2009 is to be a better person all-around. White has one goal in particular: “Love and forgive my enemies.”

• Jennifer Wells has a resolution that she said will be very easy to keep: reading the four books in author Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series. Wells and friend Tessa Smith — both wearing Twilight T-shirts — were heading to Walmart to buy the second book in the series and were then planning to watch the “Twilight” movie at the Aztec Five Theaters. Any other resolutions? “I guess I could be nicer to my family,” joked Wells.

• Maria Salazar, of Grants, said she made a major resolution this year, to take care of her health. “I want to focus on my health, I am diabetic and I smoke, so I need to become healthier.” She said she is a single mother and wants to be around to watch her daughter grow up. “I’m 30 and I have been smoking for 15 years,” she said. “I have made resolutions every year — which I have not kept, including to stop smoking — but this year I am going through with it,” she said. With a determined look, she said she will “definitely stop smoking this year no matter what.” “I want to get out of Grants as well, spread my wings and show my daughter what else there is out there,” she said.

• Doryan Vanlandingham said she is pregnant and wants to do something for her unborn child. “I want to grow a healthy baby,” she said. She does not smoke or drink and needs to begin watching what she eats and exercise.

• Mary Salazar said she is an impatient person. “I want to learn how to have more patience this year,” is the first of two resolutions she made this year, she said. She said she hates to wait for anything. “If something needs to be done it needs to be done right now,” she said. “I also want to learn how to relax more.” Salazar said she lives life on a high wire: “I am on the go, at 80 mph all the time.” It has been a way of life for her, and she said it will be tough to accomplish these goals this year but she is determined to do so.

• Rachelle Charley from Low Mountain resolved “To look for happiness within myself and appreciate the now.”

• Lorencita Bitsuie, from Ganado wants to go back to school, and her new year’s resolution is, “To encompass self-improvement through education and spirituality.”

• Anita Claw from Hunter’s Point said, “My resolution will be more appreciative of life and be thankful. Good things come in little packages.”