Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

In the last of a series we find ourselves just past the Thanksgiving holiday, and now that the turkey is starting to wear off of my system and I’m able to maintain more than two hours sitting in my chair without a nap, let’s take a few minutes and discuss an annual Weez tradition.

For the last few years I’ve spent the week after Thanksgiving not going crazy shopping although this year, thanks to a beautiful and fun friend, I did survive my first Black Friday experience. No folks, instead of the usual routine of putting up the tree and searching for that perfect gift, I like to take a few moments to reflect on the past year and set forth the future in style with the Annual Weez Thanksgiving Resolutions. Oh sure, most of you are scratching your head wondering why I can’t seem to fall in line with everyone else and just do them at New Years, but by setting them now, I give myself a little extra time to work on them, and if by New Years I need a mulligan no one really knows the difference, so let’s get started shall we?

1. I resolve this year to take the road less traveled. To stand out from the crowd, to dance like no one is watching and to sing like no one is listening.

2. I resolve to spend a little more time working on where I want to be, and a little less time working on where I’ve been.

3. I resolve to spend more time looking up. Both for God and at the stars and finding joy in both.

4. I resolve to not get caught up in the rush of life, but to take it slow, pay my dues and spend a lot more time just “being still”.

5. I resolve to shorten the distance between Rhode Island and Iowa.

6. I resolve to spend a few more nights around the campfire and to make sure there are good friends around it as well.

7. I resolve to live within my means, and to be debt free by the end of 2012.

8. I resolve to think that this will be the year for the Cubs, even if I know better.

9. I resolve to keep my house cleaner than it really needs to be. And to make sure that I don’t have any of those strange moments where I spend hours trying to figure out what that smell is.

10. I resolve to let people lead their own lives. To no longer try to direct their paths, but to encourage rather than discourage whatever their life choices are.

11. I resolve to give more than I take. Unless of course we are talking about pie, and then the giving and taking concept will be thrown out the window.

12. I resolve to finally sort through the last three boxes and put things in order in my filing cabinet, and to throw away the things that hold me hostage from living for today and the future.

13. I resolve to laugh when I can, weep when I should and never stop getting back on my feet and moving forward at every opportunity.

14. I resolve to keep writing, even when ideas don’t flow out of my brain, and I’m too tired to think.

15. I resolve to put my folded clean clothes away IN the dresser and not just leave them in a clothes basket on the floor.

16. I resolve to spend more time building bridges across new water, than worrying about bridges that are to far gone to be repaired.

17. I resolve to commit random acts of kindness every week, not because I feel I should, but because it’s the right thing to do.

18. I resolve to speak sweeter, to think clearer and to learn to be more patient.

19. I resolve to take a vacation with the kids, and to have it be somewhere they want to go, not just somewhere Dad drug them along to…(I’m guessing that means somewhere other than the cattle dog trails).

20. Finally I resolve to stand up for myself, and to look at my life as something worth inviting other people to share in, and not something that isn’t quite good enough.

See you next week…Remember, we’re all in this together.