Dorothy Wilhelm’s New Year's resolutions for 2026

Mrs. Johnson was never glad to see me.

Never. Not once. She seemed to shrink visibly as I made my way through the door of our one room schoolhouse where grades one through eight learned together.

You couldn’t blame her. I was sort of a walking mud puddle, dragging my coat and mittens behind me. At five years of age, I was the whole 1st and 2nd grade. The minute I came in, she was forced to assign one of the older girls to teach while she took time to unwind me from wet clothes and give me a chair next to the potbellied stove to spend the rest of the morning drying off.

This happened every day from approximately October to May. It’s easy to see why this scholarly lady waited eagerly for any day that didn’t involve wet clothes - or me.

I remember the first school day after New Years, when she could put all fifteen students to work making resolutions which she assured us would not only influence the coming year, but our entire lives.

New Years resolutions were a big deal. It was as good as a vacation. We did them at school and at home. At school we scrunched over our desks imagining character improvement. Naturally the improvement varied according to our age and place in life.

My perpetual and unreachable resolution was to keep my room neat. Now, eight decades later that still hasn’t happened but the piles of papers and valuable clippings are restricted to two or three areas. Large areas, but still.

Naturally, our resolutions in the ‘40s were heavily influenced by World War ll. We vowed to collect tin cans and newspapers, to help keep track of rendered fat. As The Atlantic wrote, during World War II, the US government urged Americans to save excess fat rendered from cooking and donate it to the army to produce explosives. And as early as age 10, we went to military hospitals to help wounded soldiers write letters home.

As the war ended our resolutions became more personal again. By the time I was 19 my major resolution was to find a husband by the time I was 20 and officially an old maid.

In recent years, I had imagined that New Years resolutions were part of the dead and lightly mourned past, so I was really surprised when my friend Romalyn told me that at 20 she cherishes resolution time. She makes new resolutions every year, she says, as to how she can make her life better.

Another colleague, Amy, says she has no formal resolutions, but she is studying French and is planning a trip to Mongolia. So maybe it’s comfortable to take this New Years time to reset your personal goals. Maybe what we’re saying is that by next year at this time we’d like to feel some progress had been made.

Now, it isn’t too late to make resolutions, if you should be seized by the impulse. Many motivational speakers say that it’s best to set small reachable goals. Like: Move my body eight more times a day, for instance.

It was a big surprise to me to learn that folk singer Woodie Guthrie had written his resolutions for the coming year by hand and they later become a song. On Jan. 1, 1943, Guthrie wrote down a set of 33 “New Years Rulin’s” in his journal.

Here are just a few: “Work more and better,” “wash teeth if any,” and “write a song a day.” I can get into that.

I just entered my 92nd year. There were songs and visits from offspring. My resolution might just be to be here for 93 - and keep my room clean. Happy New Year!

Where to find Dorothy

Find Dorothy’s virtual events and podcasts at www.itsnevertoolate.com. Her podcasts are also on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get podcasts.

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This story was originally published January 4, 2026 at 5:10 AM with the headline "Dorothy Wilhelm’s New Year's resolutions for 2026."