Real David H.

COMMITMENT
a pledge or promise; obligation

RESOLUTION
a resolve or determination

I’m so tired of hearing people making “resolutions.” It’s interesting to note that dictionary.com’s meaning of resolution is “a determination.” Yes, we’re all determined to do new things come Jan. 1, but it’s not a promise. It’s not a pledge. It’s not a commitment.

And that’s what I want to do throughout 2011 — make commitments. The other day on Twitter I posted something similar to this and I got a great response. There are lots of people out there ready to make commitments … but I think they missed my point. Yes, you’ve signed up for a certain race or made it a goal to run 1,000 miles in the year — those are goals. How you get to those goals is where the commitment comes in.

My eagerness to make 2011 the year of commitments comes from my own failures learning experiences this month. At the beginning of the month I was determined (or shall I say resolved) to get my weight back to the 170s. It’s just not happening. Part of why it’s not happening is because I mentioned it once, got halfway through the month just fine and then just fell apart with my diet and have gotten lazy in the past week. A complete lack of commitment.

While I will continue to not focus on an end number, I am going to commit myself to including my weight once a week on my blog. My commitment is to weigh myself Thursday and Friday and take the best of those numbers and post it at some point every weekend. So that being said, my first official 2011 weigh in will be Jan. 6/7. (Having lost weight before and knowing the evils of a scale, the two weigh-ins work well. I’d hate for a big meal the day before to ruin a week for me.)

This is just the first of many commitments. I’m not making a punch list, but instead will make this a year-long thing. As part of making commitments, I will use the #2011commitments tag on Twitter throughout the year and use that same tag for related posts here. You may have noticed a slightly different title to this post using a Roman numeral. My commitment to making commitments will be to occasionally blog using the same title to keep the theme going.

I don’t want this to fall apart in a few weeks; I’d like to take the best of the best of these posts and reflect on them a year from now. Whether I use that title 5 times or 20 times will be determined, but expect to see the tag used quite often.

So who’s in? This isn’t a Twitter challenge or something to report to me weekly on, but I welcome anyone who wants to use the same title or tag on Twitter.