View from the Cheap Seats is an extension of the newsroom, which is frequently a site of heated debate on topics ranging from the extremely serious to the utterly ridiculous. This web edition features the views of print edition columnists Thom Barker (Wednesday) and Calvin Daniels (Friday), as well as web exclusive content by Devin Wilger (Thursday).
This week: Are you making any New Year’s resolutions?
Break with tradition
It seems like we go through this every year, probably because we go through this every year.
And every year, I say something along the lines of I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Then I explain why it is just another day and why it is foolish to arbitrarily make resolutions based on an arbitrary system of measuring time.
Sometimes I touch on the history of calendar development and the disconnect between scientific reality and human activity or something along those lines.
I am going to break with that tradition this year and resolve to take better care of myself.
A.D. 2016 was a tough year for me health-wise because I am for the first time feeling my age. I struggled with my joints, specifically my knees and right hip. I know (or at least I hope) these troubles are related to being overweight. And therein lies the Catch-22. Weight puts pressure on joints thereby causing issues. Having issues makes it very difficult to exercise effectively. Not exercising effectively perpetuates weight problems and attempting to exercise sometimes exacerbates joint problems.
I also lost my family doctor this year, which meant a bit of bouncing around. Not having a regular physician, of course, means bouncing makes continuity of care difficult, especially when you are a terrible patient, as I know I am.
So, I guess the resolution is: Find a new doctor, get on a program, lose some weight, get healthy… or at least diligently work toward those goals.
Even though I am new at resolutions, I am not stupid enough to make it any more specific than that. Setting a goal of, say, lose specific amount of pounds by a specific date is setting up for failure and in my experience that can be very discouraging.
- Thom Barker
Quality time on the couch
The problem with New Years resolutions is that I don’t believe in them. If you want to make a big change in your life, you can do it any time you want. If you’re waiting for New Years, you’re probably just going out of tradition rather than any real desire to make a big change.
However, I do like the idea of doing long term projects and starting on New Years to do it. It gives a nice, logical starting point. To that end, I’ve got a couple things I want to get going in 2017, both of which are a bit silly but are still things I want to accomplish. One is an ambitious film watching project, that being an effort to watch around 100 years of film, starting in about 1917 and then going on to the present day, watching at least one movie from each year. I’m not setting a deadline, I just think it’ll be a fun idea, and I was inspired by some great films of the 1940s that quickly became favorites in my house – films like The Ghost and Mrs. Miur and Rope. That just made me think taking a trip into different years might be a fun idea, as well as exploring decades I usually ignore. For whatever reason, I don’t tend to watch many films from the 1980s or the 1930s, and I have a complete blind spot for silent pictures in spite of loving Buster Keaton’s The General. I might even write about this adventure, I think it would be worthwhile.
The other long term project is going to be to play some old games, namely the ones that I purchased over a decade ago and never really got around to spending much time with. I say I will do this every year, and every year I chip away at this towering stack of games while adding many more to the pile, because they are cheap and I am a fool. This year, I again will commit to finishing everything on the Playstation 2 stack, given that we are already on the Playstation 4 and frankly it’s getting ridiculous that I know actual people younger than these games and I still haven’t given much time to many of them. I probably won’t actually succeed, just as I haven’t succeeded in previous years, but I’ll tell myself I will.
So, as it turns out, unlike the typical resolution to get more active and do more exercise, my plan for 2017 will be the exact opposite. I have grand and ambitious plans for what I’m going to do when I plant myself on the couch.
- Devin Wilger
The impossible guess
If I could actually predict anything with any amount of certainty I’d be at a horse race track somewhere getting rich.
Trust me, before the Brad Wall dropped the axe on standardbred racing in the province a few years back, I put a few dollars on a few horses at Cornerstone Raceway in the city, and rarely saw those dollars ever again.
But hey as a new year nears we all get into the prediction and resolution mode, so I’ll give it a whirl.
The economy will stay slow, so expect the screws put to provincial spending, and locally Yorkton Council is likely to be cautious to the point of spending only where absolutely necessary.
Internationally the Trump presidency stateside ensures something that will also be Vaudevillian funny, or potentially horror story scary, with either eventuality meaning volatility.
On the sports scene at least three Canadian teams will make the playoffs in the National Hockey League.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders will make the playoffs in the CFL.
The Toronto Raptors will find a way to get past Cleveland to make the NBA finals.
The Saskatchewan Rush will take the NLL crown for a third straight year.
And, finally as a resolution, I’ll dedicate myself to seeing disc golf continue to grow in the region, yes that is a given, so it’s pretty safe to make that a goal.
- Calvin Daniels
