Elizabeth Davies: Resolutions really hard to keep with all the distractions

My New Year's resolution made it until Jan. 4.

No, I wasn't seduced by a cupcake or tempted by a martini. I actually made it to the gym, paid my bills on time and counted my calories.

But the resolution that fell by the wayside first was this: ignoring all Britney Spears news.

To my credit, my news source for Britney's breakdown was actually CNN. It's not like I went looking for Hollywood gossip. It wandered into my living room, between stock market reports and caucus predictions, and found me. Of course, upon having heard of another "Britney breakdown" - this one complete with "Will she ever see her kids again?" commentary, I had to jump online and get the full story.

I suppose some resolutions are just too tough to keep.

Pollster FranklinCovey recently reported that 35 percent of people break their resolutions by the end of January, although it's not unusual to hear statistics saying that up to 80 percent of resolutions are forgotten after the first month.

Whatever the number, it's obvious that we have better things to do than self-improvement. Perhaps the problem is that there are too many distractions in January.

Distraction No. 1: After-Christmas sales. My husband wasn't too thrilled to see that the tube of lotion he paid $10.50 for on Dec. 19 was going for $3 a week later.

However, I thought this was wonderful news, because it meant I could stock up on 10 more tubes of lotion.

You see, for women, there's something magical about the word "inventory" that floats around shopping malls like fairy dust in January and February. It's the time of year when retailers want as few items as possible in the store, so they drop prices in order to clean house. Bargain hunters are happy to oblige.

Distraction No. 2: Football playoffs. First we had Monday night football. Then Thursday night football. Now it's on all day Saturday and Sunday. The playoffs are an even bigger deal in our house this year, because the Green Bay Packers made it past New Year's Day. Suddenly, all the other teams' games matter immensely. It's not enough to check out the scores online or read about the game in the newspaper. We have to actually see the game so that we can properly strategize, just in case the Packers should ever call us for our halftime input.

Distraction No. 3: Tax season. There is a pile of paper in my office that is literally 8 inches high. It's been growing ever since I had a baby in April and consequently decided I no longer had time to file basic paperwork. So every piece of paper that we might possibly need for tax season is teetering precariously on top of the file cabinet, with my hopes that it will somehow work its way via an osmosis-like process into the proper files so that my accountant doesn't give me "the look" again this year.

Distraction No. 4: Primaries. It's like high school civics class all over again each time we have a presidential election. Wait, when's the primary? What's the national convention for? And what's the big deal about Iowa?

Then there are the masses of Hillary-Obama-Romney e-mails floating around.

"Who's the candidate for you? Take this quiz." "Barack Obama's secret past! Read more here!"

Now, how am I supposed to keep up with all of that?

I have more than my share of Britney news to devour.

Rockford Register Star