A couple of New Years ago I made a resolution to stop saying Two Thousand Twelve and start using Twenty Twelve. I reasoned that the new millennium had been acknowledged long enough. Here I am, two years later, and writing Twenty Fourteen seems as strange to me as saying Two Thousand Fourteen. I can’t believe that people back in Nineteen Fourteen experienced this same weirdness. Maybe it’s because that whether I say Twenty Fourteen or Two Thousand Fourteen, it still winds up being the year I turn sixty four which is still as hard to write as 64. That’s why I have given up on resolutions. The  calendar is urging me on to New Year’s Evolutions instead.

One of the common criticisms of good science fiction is that the author has not presented the world of the future within an evolutionary context. How did we get to this future world where a Federation creates a star ship capable of interplanetary flight and peopled by men and women who don’t mind dressing alike? The reader is required to suspend his or her dis-belief and just accept that all of the world’s problems have been solved except for those pesky Romulans and Klingons.

I propose that we start to fill in the gaps of this literary oversight. Let the evolution begin! At least mine.

Here are my evolutions for Twenty Fourteen:

1. I will no longer watch MSNBC; CNN; and FOX (this one will be easy to achieve.)

2. I will try to smile more.

3. I will try to worry less about what people think.

4. I really will try to eat less red meat.

5. I will enjoy sporting events without getting outraged that any team I root for could possibly lose.

6. I will appreciate the things that I achieve and not dwell on the things I could not.

7. I will rejoice at being sixty-four and 64 and I will play “When I’m Sixty-Four” on my sixty-fourth birthday.

8. I will make reading The Newell Post fun and not just a “Here he goes again” kinda thing.

9. I will vary my routines so that they no longer seem so routine.

10. I will learn to play “Words Of Love” on the guitar.

I am going to stop at ten. I think they are all doable. I know I will have to remind myself of  them from time to time and re-commit myself to achieving the evolution I deserve. There will be others mostly dealing with my spiritual growth but I am not ready to share them just yet. I am confident, however, that if I focus on these ten, I will be on my way to a better me which is all that we could ask of evolution.