Tinkering around the edges

My new year’s resolution this year is to do better regardless of conditions. This is not as straightforward as dropping a few pounds. It will be tricky to track and the math will be fuzzy.

In terms of comparisons, I’m targeting the margins for improvement. Rather than meal-planning and hawk-eying bathroom scales, I’m casually self-reflective. How’s my hydration?

2025 is already more than 10% in the past. The pace of the days seemed to slow after the succession of late fall and winter holidays. But here is February, traffic cop of time travel, with a friendly warning that we are still cruising at something closer to freeway speed after having exited onto country highway.

So I’m taking my foot off the gas. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

Driving automobiles surely presents some of the most literal and straightforward opportunities for many of us to do better in variable conditions. Accidents are bound to happen, given not everyone on the roads is possessed of snow tires and saintly patience. But even marginal slow-downs and minor adjustments to departure times can result in accidents prevented—imperceptible miracles.^*

Yes, persistently below-freezing temperatures and intermittent precipitation present both opportunities and hazards. For the latter pair are one and the same thing. Skating and skiing are just perfected forms of what surely began as slips and falls. We crawl before we walk; we post-hole before we snowshoe.

One day, a series of slight adjustments and small improvements collectively fall into place. What began as a shift here in one’s center of gravity, then later, on another attempt, a counter-balancing swing of an appendage there, emerges as a novel mode of motion altogether.

And so, perhaps, someday this year, an accumulation of small improvements will rise to the level of a new mode of living. Will it feel like flying? Will it seem like a miracle?

That I am laboring to finish this column under a looming deadline, supine in a dentist’s chair with a bright light shining on my face, suggests I could have made some minor adjustments in time management and prioritization of professional obligations leading into the first week of February.

In a previous column, I waxed poetic on trying brand new, radically different things. Now I offer some practical prose around small changes and minor improvements. What opportunities can you find for slight adjustments to your routines and techniques?

What new modes of life could the accumulation of such small changes offer?

* If you are able to perceive these miracles, please write to me about it extensively. -DPM