Rodriguez: I'm making my own list and checking it twice

We’re about to reach our sweet 16. It seems like just yesterday, or was it three years ago, that the world was about to end. Hello 2016.

It’s only days away. Let’s light 16 candles.

With another year comes new resolutions, or perhaps anti-resolutions. It’s far too easy to say “I’m not going to make any New Year’s resolutions this year because I’ll just break them.” That is a recipe for defeat.

There’s no law that says New Year’s resolutions expire in 30 days. Heck, maybe I’ll fulfill some unfulfilled ones from 2013. Even though some items on my bucket list may be as cold as ice, it’s still my bucket list.

Helena Rodriguez

Time for a meltdown. I mean a bucket-list meltdown.

So, I’m making a list and checking it twice, because Santa didn’t know everything I wanted this year. But that’s OK; Christmas wasn’t about Santa Claus. I know the reason for the season and I’m still rocking around my Christmas tree until Dia de Los Reyes on Jan. 6.

You know them? The three wise dudes who were running a little late that first Christmas? There were no direct flights to Bethlehem. They got there when they got there.

Back to my meltdown. As for fulfilling my New Year’s resolutions, like the three wise men, I will get there when I get there.

As an added incentive, Pope Francis has named this year “The Year of Mercy.” I think that God showers us with mercy when we give him gratitude instead of attitude. Perhaps, though, he’ll accept my gratitude with attitude.

That brings me to my bucket list, one blast from my New Years past, and that is to

• get fit;

• lose weight;

• get off the couch (but wait, the couch is kinda comfortable, so off the laptop and outside);

• don’t care anymore to write that best-selling novel (I just wanna be me, a more relaxed and energized me);

• buy a house, or maybe not because maybe home is where the heart is and so I already own a home.

That’s my New Year’s resolution and I’m sticking to it, through thin ice, or through the melting of thick ice. Now time to put my bucket list on defrost.

Helena Rodriguez is a Portales native. Contact her at [email protected]