We are not out of January yet and I’m thinking about a do-over on my New Year’s Resolutions. I mean, I haven’t lost a pound. I haven’t eaten more leafy vegetables. I have not read one biography of a World War II general and learned to apply his battle strategy to my small business.

I think I’ll follow the example of World War II’s least celebrated generals - the French - and just go ahead and wave the white flag on those resolutions now. I am not bettering myself. I am middle-aged - heck, I’m a 44-year-old man who thinks fried chicken fingers make a perfect light lunch - I’m probably past middle-aged. This is who I am. It ain’t getting any better.

So, I’m amending my resolutions this year. In 2023, I’m going to fall asleep watching Netflix more. I’m going to spend more time reading … Twitter. I’m going to be emotionally attached to a college sports team, the success or failure of which will affect my mood for days after their games, and, further, I will consider being a fan of one of their opponents to be a character flaw in others more or less akin to workplace embezzlement.

See, now I’m crushing my New Year’s Resolutions. I have never been prouder of myself. I don’t know if I can keep this torrid pace of success up, but I like my chances as long as I continue to sell myself short.

Some of you might think I’m approaching life with a bad attitude. And, yes, maybe, my current outlook on life may have something to do with the fact it is late January here in beautiful, crime-free Iuka, Mississippi. And late January means it’s dark when I get to work in the morning, it’s dark when I leave work and it rains every day during my lunch break.

To be honest, I’m not one hundred percent sure the sun exists anymore. It may have just burned out, like those bulbs that came with the fake Christmas tree that quit working in mid-December the year you bought it, and, just like with the useless tree, we lost the receipt for the sun the minute we put it up. I’m thinking we’re owed the next three months in a Panama City Beach timeshare in lieu of store credit.

However, I have got to put on a positive front while trapped in the house by cold weather. I have to do this for nothing else than to keep all of the residents of the Clark household feeling like the life of the party, instead of turning on each other like the Donner Party.

That means that I can’t get mad when I walk into the middle schooler’s room and see that he’s making a Tik Tok of himself playing his PlayStation. I just smile and acknowledge how amazing it is that he has the mental focus to multitask like that despite the fact that he cannot wrap his head around cleaning his room within a reasonable amount of time after an adult tells him to.

Positive thinking means I cannot get frustrated when the six-year-old just plain refuses to wear clothes when he’s in his house. I just smile and hope the UPS driver doesn’t look into the front windows when he’s dropping off our Amazon packages.

Don’t tell my kids, because I think we still have the bluff on them, but NOBODY in the Clark household is going to be grounded from their electronic devices if we are going to survive the winter. What are we going to do? Sit around and talk to each other?

I think I’m going to combine all my 2023 resolutions into one: survive the winter. So far, thanks to the good Lord and high-speed wifi, I’m killing it.