You Say You Want a Resolution

Everyone has been complaining lately about the utterly deplorable suckfest that was 2010. I may have been too shell-shocked, too sleep-deprived and too baby-stoned to notice the surfeit of misery apparently all around me (oxytocin’s a helluva drug), but I really didn’t think last year was all that bad. Maybe I’ve been fortunate enough to have the new mom head-up-my-ass and was able to bypass that nonsense.

Regardless, I’ve seen fit to make a tiny resolution, being a new dawn, a new day (and I’m feeling good) and all that. I’ve decided that 2011 will be the year of More. Fuck Less. Less is so 2010. More is now, baby.

I say: More cheese. More baking. More gardening. More lipstick. More lard. More jazz. More storytelling. More “please, sir, I want some More.” Here you go, son, have at it.

This is tomato soup made from heirloom tomatoes that I grew and canned last summer, with a gossamer blob of tangy cream cheese floating atop. This is exactly what I mean – the world needs more of this. I don’t mean that the world needs more overambitious competimoms – those suck (and I also say “more compassion”), I mean the world needs more of “giving a shit,” of trying a little harder, just a little harder, to do things right. Right doesn’t come from a can or even an aseptic box with hospital corners (even though those are so tidy and easy). Sometimes Right comes from a big-ass glass jar on your overstacked pantry shelf because you took a little care a few months earlier, even as you cursed under your breath (or way over it) and nursed beeswax cream into the ulcers on your cuticles.

I know this isn’t for everyone, but as long as you’re doing more of your own amazing thing, I think you’ve got the right idea.