A Resolution to Admire

Every New Year's seems to bring the same self-serving resolutions.  We've all heard them: diet, exercise, lose weight, eat healthier, drink less alcohol, cut carbs, cut sugar, cut negativity.  By the second week of January those resolutions are barely holding on, or have completely gone the way of the Dodo.

Mark and Michelle Goodman, she is holding the bag.

I would only bet on one person to make her resolution stick until next year. Michelle Goodman vowed to "pick up a bag of trash each day" this year.  Everyday. Or, in case she has a productive day of five or six bags, she can "bank" those days for later.  The ultimate result is 365 bags of free-floating trash will be removed from natural areas and along roadsides.  Her good deeds are most likely to occur in Texas where she lives, but she will also continue to ply her resolution on vacations and travel near and far.

Michelle (Shelly) picking up trash along the dunes at Mustang Island, Texas.

Shelly is bound to make this resolution last.  Picking up trash is already a way of life for her.  She makes every place she goes better for her visit.  We know she will stick to this resolution, as a more determined person has never lived. She already diets, exercises and eats right.  She is a paramount of positivity. Shelly already has all those other things going for her.

I'd like to say it is in her gene pool. Her grand-father, John, is the great grand-daddy of litter pick-up and good deeds in his neighborhood, too. These folks are the personification of their tidy German genes.

Michelle and Mark relaxing in nature.  It's easy when there is no trash to be seen.

The New Year has begun.  Now I resist making resolutions I can't keep, as I have a lifetime of January failures. But good deeds don't need a schedule, every day can be a new beginning.  So let's all try to follow Shelly's example and make our world a better place, bag by bag.  It can be a grocery sack or a kitchen garbage bag.  If your feeling particularly spry, get out the giant Hefty!

Weedpicker's goal for 2016 includes gathering more bags of byway trash.  Just don't be surprised if some of those trash bags have invasive plants stuck into them, too.

PS.  May I tell you just how proud I am of my kid?