Make sure you get some WIM time.

My New Years Resolution


My cell phone rang at 8:36 AM today. I did not answer it. I could see from my phone screen the call was from Dan Snell. Now Dan is Mr. cheerful. He has a compelling manner, which is pleasantly augmented by a persuasive voice. He is charismatic and has an attractive, articulate and intelligent wife. And he is always in an encouraging, positive, upbeat mood and always makes me feel good when I talk with him.

Too talk with Dan is to feel great. To be bolstered. To be motivated. But I knew if I took his call, I would be breaking my New Year’s resolution. Something that I vowed never to do. So I declined the call. I was tempted quite frankly, but I wished that my new resolution remain unadulterated and unscathed by yielding to the temptation to merely feel good. For I was in my new weekly woe is me, “WIM”, meeting with myself.
Yes, I was having breakfast alone at IHOP. I ordered the $4.99 regular with all the pancakes you can eat and I was eating silently and listing all the reasons I have for adopting WIM. The list is intimidating. I kept writing at my breakfast table. My complaints were all legitimate, well-founded and seemingly endless. Clearly I had walked in the valley of darkness with no candle and stumbled on the smallest pebble.

As I wrote in my WIM journal, I was mysteriously energized that I had found the time to adopt the WIM resolution and that I had found, in myself, someone so eager, yet so objective to listen to and commiserate with me on my complaints. A critical component of my WIM plan is to journal each of my reasons for WIM. But before I continued my WIM list, I paused for a moment and contemplated the cleverness, the shrewdness, the inescapable, almost insanely great creativity that gave birth to my 2010 WIM resolution. It was efficient. It was economical. It promised to be effective.

The “jist” of the New Year’s resolution was having a focused pre-planned scheduled WIM time rather than have WIM times spread out uncontrolled, unplanned, unmanaged, and uncoordinated throughout the week. Sporadic random WIM gets in the way of accomplishing anything worthwhile. It makes one inept. Rather than have random “Woe is Me” times during the day, such as, when my wife pays me less than the attention I so properly deserve, or when my dog refuses to come sit by me, or when my friends who I do not write too do not write to me either, or when I read that Gates makes another billion dollars, or when Bush who I know I am smarter than, gets to ride in Air Force One; I have cleverly set aside a special time during the week for getting into the whole WIM notion.

And there I was in my weekly WIM session when Dan Snell called. What was a person to do when Dan Called? After all I was deep; I mean I was in a cavernous, subterranean deep level into WIM and updating my WIM journal with all the new woe facts that happened this last week. For example, I bought 100 shares of Apple stock and it went up 10 points and then just this morning it went back down 2 points. Will the woe ever cease? Of course that little voice inside my head kept saying, “Didn’t you just make $800. Should you not be happy?” Some voices just don’t get it. When I am in my WIM session, I certainly do not want to look on the bright side of things. It is absolutely important, essential if you will to the process, that once a WIM session begins the WIM’e focuses all mental and spiritual energies on the WIM’er.

Consequently, I, the WIM’e, was focused on the commentator, the WIM’er, who had deliberately and I am sure with a malicious desire to burden me with this monetary loss, and with full knowledge that the libelous remarks were purposely and capriciously directed directly at me, had written disparaging remarks about Apple causing me the WIM’e to lose money. And that was just one of the items on this week's Woe Is Me list. When Dan Snell called at 8:36 AM I only had a few valuable minutes left in my WIM session so I had to forgo feeling great for 9 remaining minutes of WIM.

The beauty of having a special WIM time is that you can express all your WIM feelings uninterrupted by the Mr. Upbeats of the world; or your wife bringing you a cup of coffee in bed; or your dog jumping up and down because he is so glad to see you; or your son or daughter calling you to ask how you are; or just with the knowledge that each day you get an opportunity to get up again in the morning and do something. These things just get in the way of WIM. So I have decided to take all my woe and consider it genuinely and seriously each week from 8:30 AM to 8:45 AM on Friday and woe is to the person who tries to call me during that time.

The irony of this New Year’s resolution is that I am starting to feel so good about my weekly WIM sessions that I am having a hard time expressing woe for 15 minutes. I just do not have enough woe. I may have to shorten the WIM sessions. Oh, woe is me another conflict I have to resolve.