Bird Has the Word: Continuity

(Finally updated and fit to go live. Sheesh.)

Well, one of this web site's goals for 2023 is to replace our departed friends with new ones, so this web site is participating in a new link-up shared by Lydia Schoch. (This post will probably go live before the link does. If you don't see the link in this paragraph, come back in a few hours.) Today's post is about our goals for 2023,

I'm wary of Sports Metaphors, mind you, even when the sport in question is running. Women my age learned that Sports Metaphors were things men said when they didn't want to talk to us. Of course people like Billie Jean King became rich and famous challenging that sort of thing; I liked Billie Jean King but she is and always was sooo different from me. I'm not even talking about the girlfriends. Anyway I've always heard words like "goals" as saying "Oh that's a guy thing." Turn back, flip hair, get interested in some sort of "women's thing" and make some male-type person sweat to reclaim my attention. Some of us were built to do that one-of-the-guys thing, some to enjoy being girls. 

Another funny thing I've noticed about people who got into "setting goals" in the 1980s, when that sort of thing was very trendy. This is a two-headed thing...

(1) "How can anyone have a successful business without setting goals for it?" How can anyone have a successful business under any circumstances whatsoever--that's more tan I know! But I dutifully declared what seemed like the reasonable goal of earning a four-year degree. Did not happen. I became ill, I became unemployable, I became one of the poor slobs who hang out in public libraries trying to look as if they were reading or writing anything worthwhile, and people heard me typing and paid me to type for them. I bought a typewriter and started typing at home. I started advertising. If I had a goal in advertising my typing service, it was to pay the next month's rent. Two years later my typing service was doing more business than Kelly. If I'd had a screen name back then "Horatiana Alger" might have been it.

(2) In practice, I saw a lot more that supported another old saying, "If you want to make God laugh, just...start 'setting goals'!" 

The Bible actually advises, "1 Boast not thyself of to-morrow, For thou knowest not what a day bringeth forth." Proverbs 27:1. "13 dGo to now, ye that say, eTo day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and fcontinue there a year, and gbuy and sell, and get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? ||hIt is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, iIf the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16 But now ye jrejoice in your kboastings: lall such mrejoicing is evil. " James 4: 12-16. 

Right. I saw a lot of braggadocio among the people who talked about "setting goals." They all seemed to think we are saved by God plus extroversion, but mostly by extroversion, as they named and claimed all the wealth they were planning to take in from their audiences. People like Robert Schuller with his Crystal Cathedral show on full-color television obviously dazzled a lot of people in the 1980s, but they turned me off.

In more recent years everybody on Twitter wanted to use the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, because dang straight they do matter, and if anybody likes some of The Nephews more than the others because of the way they look, person has nothing to say to me. So long as "Black Lives Matter" was a sentence used to express people's feelings, everybody wanted to say it. Then the sentence was claimed as the name for an organization that unfortunately did not evoke such universal support. BLM was even blamed for violent attacks on police officers (no, not the ones who shot too soon or hit too many times, either). People, and some of them were Black, started replying with hashtags like #BlueLivesMatter, because they do too. 

In the same way, in the 1980s we heard a lot about "naming and claiming" whatever you hoped to accomplish, but after a few years of that there was a lot more solidarity around the phrase "keeping it real." 

Of course it's all right to project fantasies of where our present actions might lead. Maybe this is where we hope they will lead, maybe it's where we want to change course to make sure our choices don't lead.

As it might be, for a web site:

"1. Through diligence, determination, talent, wit, and charm, I build a six-figure daily readership.

2. As my readership grows, other web sites' readership inevitably shrinks. Michelle Malkin, Michelle Singletary, Scott Adams, Dave Barry, and Glenn Beck all pay for spots on this web site. This helps.

3. Thanks to all this publicity, my book sells a gazillion copies and makes me obscenely rich.

4. Bored by Trump's and DeSantis's in-fighting, I nominate Sarah Palin for President. She wins.

5. While I am unavoidably in Washington consulting with President Palin, the cats all have a terrible time with some sort of mild food poisoning because nobody else bothers to give them charcoal solution, and I have a nervous breakdown from guilt. President Palin then listens to Glenn Beck isntead of me and the whole country has a nine-day crisis. What nature intended to be little-bitty should not grow too big."

Ebullient "goal-setters" always seemed to be planning for things that didn't happen and thus at a loss when they had to deal wih what did happen. They seemed like captains of the buggy whip industry sitting around telling stockholders how the buggy whips of 1980 were going to be designed, or like yuppies at General Motors cackling happily about how Americans weren't going to buy those little foreign cars that it soon turned out that American women loved to drive. 

Then I also observed two things about New Year's resolutions:

1. People who made huge sweeping "New Year New You" resolutions usually didn't stay with them for long. "This year I'm going to lose 200 pounds, quit smoking, quit drinking, quit watching daytime television, buy a whole new wardrobe in size 32, get promoted to vice-president, marry a millionnaire, and quit my job." By the third of January the person is eating two plates of macaroni and cheese while watching daytime television on the computer at work.

2. People who made small achievable resolutions, based on what they were actually doing, usually carried out their resolutions. "This year I'm going to take a night school course and pass a test that will qualify me for a promotion, I'm going to paint the garage, and I'm going to adopt a dog." Chance are good that those things will get done, and also the person will get the promotion.

So, as PBird observed at her blog, How to Meow in Yiddish, continuity is a good theme for New Year's resolutions and any "goal-setting" in which people want to indulge.

This web site, therefore, hopes to be able to

* maintain a pace of two posts per day, sponsored

* bring you more early reviews of new books

* picture at least 50 more shelter pets into loving homes

* report a nationwide, if not global, glyphosate ban

* and make the Party of Censorship, or any political party whose leaders have not thoroughly condemned censorship, an object of national ridicule

...if it please God that we live through the year 2023. 

There are other things we'd like to accomplish in 2023, but we will let them gestate in privacy until the time comes to announce then,