Jane and I have agreed to compare notes on our New Year’s resolutions.  One of my favorite things about my friend Jane is her love-hate (mostly love) relationship with Facebook.  And her 2009 resolution ruminations–with full-force Facebook ambivalence–made me smile.  The truth is, Jane is what Malcolm Gladwell termed "the connector personality."  A natural networker and cultivator of a startling multiplicity of friendships.  Throughout election season, Jane consistently scooped my hundred or so other friends with the funniest and most provocative posts and commentary.  She was the first to plop Tina Fey as Sarah Palin into my news feed.  So, Jane, while I admire your search for balance and your nurturing instincts, I (selfishly) hope you’ll keep the current running through the Facebook feeds in 2009.

Well, now for my own list of resolutions.  I used to make my list in a Franklin planner with O Magazine and Real Simple spread out in front of me for inspiration.   And I always ended up sabotaging myself.  You see, that sardonic little voice at the back of my head was so busy making fun of the Container Store’s $60 sheet-metal box, Franklin-Covey’s empire of productive humorlessness, and Oprah’s cover-girl self-indulgences that I forgot whatever time-saving, life-enhancing organizational initiative I was supposed to be forging ahead with.  No serious-as-a-heart-attack planner or ideal-selling magazines this year–just me, a blank page, and a dash of 40-something self-awareness.

1. Stop spending so much time on my laptop.  After all, why not consolidate the Limewire viruses on the family desktop? 

2. Give up chocolate. Well, the cheap paraffin-laden chocolate, that is.  After all, my beloved Dove chocolates offer me not only anti-oxidant-rich comfort but also wisdom and guidance in every golden wrapper.

3. Block every Facebook application that ends up making me feel guilty if I don’t reciprocate by sending a limited-edition Star Wars character, saving a square millimeter of rain forest, or hurling a yellow snowball.   As high a threshold as I have for creative time-wasting on the computer, life is too short to sit there debating between a Boba Fett or a Chewbacca for that high school acquaintance with whom I still have zilch-o in common.

4. Practice setting boundaries.  Unless someone makes me feel really guilty.

5. Take more pictures. And then try very hard not to lose the SD card holding them all.   And then remember to share them with my enormous, Flickr-loving, Facebooking family.

6. Eat more McDonald’s fries, insisting on “super-size” no matter how emphatically the guy working the drive-through disavows that there ever was such a thing.  After all, as Fast Food Nation documented so well, McDonald’s fries are the result of millions of dollars of research into what will best please my taste buds, and I for one think that such a scientifically proven delight is worth some extra time on the elliptical.

7. Check my voice mail more frequently than once a month.  And stop alienating my friends by telling them that if they really needed to get a hold of me they should have emailed.  

8. Avoid all of the clichéd things listed in Stuff White People Like.  Except for Facebook, sea salt, irony, David Sedaris, and blathering on about bad memories of high school. 

9. Get rid of my muffin-tops.  Perhaps, if I really must have those chocolates and fries, by simply buying bigger pants.

10. Avoid priests and ministers who have specific ideas for how I might “serve God.”  (It may sound glorious, but it always seems to amount to my making PowerPoint slides or having ideas quashed by one more committee.) And, instead, just spend more time helping my kids’ teachers with their 80 million duties and ceiling-high mountain of ungraded spelling tests.  No committees there–just a grateful young woman who’s busting her butt helping my 4th-grader while she plans a wedding and worries about state SOL tests. 

11. Stop making apologies for refusing to go to Target—and instead wear it as a badge of honor when the handsome UPS man brings me my dozen pencils, bottle of sunscreen, and gourmet party mix.

12. Use more wonderful Jane-Austen-esque words like "interlocutor."  And "felicity."  And "amiable" and "coquetry." And, if I find myself at a loss for the perfect Jane Austen word, to make time to reread Pride and Prejudice.

13. Allow at least one second of response time when I inquire of my interlocutor, “Have I already told you this story?”  

14.  Better still:  make every effort to surround myself with the sorts of amiable acquaintances who tell far more amusing and felicitous tales than I. 

Jane’s list can be seen here.