My New Year’s resolutions are ricocheting through my mind every day now. I despise the notion, but it keeps pestering me nonetheless. “Fuck records,” I can almost hear myself every now and then (“No More Records,” November 30, 2012). “Read less, write less,” I repeat over and over again (“Memes Come, Memes Go,” November 29, 2012). All of a sudden, I remember the bookmarks on my Mac Book Air, which is always within reach: The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde… “Fucking bookmarks,” I growl under my breath. Any day now, I will get rid of them all. The first of my own yoga principles flashes through my mind (“Ten Principles of Bon Yoga,” November 13, 2012). “Stilling the mind,” I remember Patanjali out of the blue (“The Stilling,” November 12, 2012). When I check my writings on all of the above, I notice that I am going backwards in time. Yes, the decision has been shaping in my mind. It is getting firmer and firmer. “The bookmarks must go the first day of the coming year,” I nod to myself and crack a wry smile.

Addendum (October 1, 2017)

And the newspaper bookmarks went away the first day of the following year, as promised in this piece. More important, they have never returned to the screen of my Mac Book Air. Ever since, I have only eleven bookmarks, and they are predictable enough. First of all, there are the Google browser and the Google Analytics site. Next, there are my two websites—Residua and Ca’ Bon Gallery. For good measure, there are three “official” meteorological sites—Croatia, Istria, and Italy. Then, there is the website of the Croatian National Bank. Last but not least, there are the Euratlas site, which shows maps of Europe every century since Jesus’ birth, and the MIT Pantheon site, which ranks people of renown by their popularity on the World Wide Web. And that is all. If I need to find anything in particular, I google for it. As far as the newspapers are concerned, I avoid them like the plague. On rare occasions, I browse through the article titles and bylines, but I rarely open any article. And rarely is the word. At any rate, fucking bookmarks have long been history. Most important, I am pretty certain that this will never change. Hooray!