Joe Kissell

Morgen and I have returned from a fantastic trip to Patagonia, about which I’ll be writing a great deal more in the coming days and weeks. We got back on Saturday, but haven’t had much of an opportunity to write yet because of the time change, jet lag, general travel weariness, and the 3,789,431 pieces of email, snail mail, and voicemail waiting for me.

However, I did want to say that I’ve settled on a New Year’s resolution. This is a bit unusual for me; I usually don’t make resolutions because when I do they’re always far too ambitious and I end up failing at them within a week or two. Even so, at the end of the year I habitually think about all the things in my life I’d like to be different in the coming year—you know, be healthier, earn more money, spend more time with family and friends, and so on. This time, it occurred to me that by changing just one thing I could potentially solve a great many problems. So my resolution is:

I will get plenty of sleep in 2005.

I’m leaving “plenty” as a vague amount because I really can’t quantify it in hours, but I do know for certain that I got far too little sleep in 2004. This, in turn, led to stress, grumpiness, inability to concentrate, and probably contributed to my getting sick a couple of times. There was also a story in the news a few weeks ago about how lack of sleep was found to contribute indirectly to weight gain because certain appetite-suppressing hormones were not being produced in sufficient quantities or something. So I think that if I get enough sleep this year, my waking hours will be happier, less stressful, and more productive. (“Like taking a vacation every day!”) I’ll probably be able to remember my dreams better. Maybe I’ll lose a few pounds, which would be OK. And with any luck my energy level/ch’i/mojo/overall health will increase too.

Of course, I’ve not done so well on this in these first few days of the year because I’m still trying to reset my internal clock five hours back (and 14+ hours of flying time didn’t help either), but I’m still hopeful of achieving success.

Well, that’s it. The bags have been packed, the out-of-office replies activated, the cat taken to the sitter’s house. We’re off in mere minutes for our long-awaited trip to Patagonia! Stories and pictures in the new year.