hajia

A friend asked me last week about my new year resolutions. When she noticed my incredulous look she quickly yanked out a piece of paper that contained her own. I went through it quickly and it was the usual stuff I used to write down and forget. She confessed that she had broken some already.
Well to me resolutions are supposed to be alive throughout the year and to be revised every now and then. For the past two years I have kept a list of such resolutions handy and added to it when the need arose. Perhaps this should be called a "To Do List" because they are written with achieving a goal in mind. Whenever one is achieved then an annotation is made. This gives you a nice feeling whenever you go through the list again.
Here is a part of my list for this year which really contain some items that were carried forward from last year. They are in no particular order:
1. Perform Hajj.
2. Perform the Umra.
3. Say all my 5 daily prayers on time.
4. Read 50 books. Update; Finished three, 47 to go.
5. Complete the first draft of my book on KT history 1905-1950.
6. Write the draft of a book of short stories
7. Switch to vegetarian diet once a week.
8. Travel to Lagos for a feel of the ocean. Its been long since I smelled it.
9. Visit members of my family in Kano, Kaduna, Kwara and Lagos states.
10. Read the Qur'an from cover to cover every month.
11. Wake up for Tuhajjud during the last ten days of Ramadan.
12. Make the rounds to my relations in KT once every month. Done in Feb
13. Donate 5% of my total income to motherless children and other institutional charities.
14. Keep my desk free from the usual clutter. Done
15. Visit Dubai and see what all those people going there see.
16. Subscribe to the electronic version of Readers Digest. Done
17. Give more attention to car maintenance ie check engine oil and water every morning.
18. Write a review of all the books I have read on another blog site.
19. Do simple exercise every morning within the house.
20. Switch to brown sugar.
21. Buy a Mac Laptop.
22. Clear my wardrobe of all clothes not worn for more than six months.
23. Buy new clothes for myself every quarter. two sets will be fine and must be the latest fashion.
The original list is much longer than this and I would be lucky to accomplish half of what is in there.