I’ve been watching a lot of football lately — college and NFL playoffs — and the games have been entertaining. I like to hit pause when I’m away from the TV so that I don’t miss any action. When I get back, I fast forward through the commercials. Our kids can often hear me shout, “Oh no, I’m in real time!” when the fast forward button catches up to the live broadcast. (They can also hear what my son calls “bleeps” when the Chiefs turn the ball over.)

But, there’s one commercial series that is so good it stops my fast forwarding: the Progressive Insurance “Dr. Rick” commercials where he helps people to not turn into their parents. “Who else reads books about submarines?” “My dad …”

In the newest Dr. Rick commercial, both my wife and I caught looks from our kids as the commercial played. For her, the penchant of buying signs with cute sayings about our home on them. For me, the inability to sit down in a chair without making a few grunting noises.

Lose 15 pounds, read 25 books, learn a foreign language? Ha! That ship has sailed. In 2021, I’m setting my goals low, starting with ‘don’t grunt when I sit down.’ Here are a few of the other goals I have for this new year:

Demo more equipment Recently, Scott Kinkead, executive vice president of Turfco, stopped by my house to let me take the new Turfco T5000 spreader-sprayer for a test drive around my land (see photo in our LM Gallery). What a blast! That afternoon of driving around my acreage now has me eager to see/try more equipment this year. High on my list are battery-powered chainsaws, mowers and heavy-duty digging equipment.

Teach Evey how to drive On the topic of driving, it’s hard to believe the time has come to teach my daughter how to drive. We’ve already had a few lessons. It boggles my mind that I’m in the passenger seat while she’s behind the wheel. It wasn’t that long ago we were in the same parking lot, but I was holding on to the back of her bike! (Oh no, I am becoming my parents!)

Travel in ’21 I don’t know how soon or how much, but I’m looking forward to getting out in the world this year and meeting and visiting with our readers in person. High on my list is the Grow! Annual Conference with Marty Grunder in New Orleans; the LM Growth Summit; the BMW Driving Experience with Jeffrey Scott and, of course, the 2021 GIE+EXPO. I hope to see you at one or more of these events in 2021. If you’re like me and are itching to get on the road and expand your knowledge and network, you can find additional information on all of these events on our website.

Actually get on the elliptical OK, one weight loss goal. But mostly because I spent six hours assembling the dang thing. Might as well get on it now.

Build on the success of 2020 Don’t look now (because I already did), but this magazine had a great year. If you want to judge a book by its cover, that’s fine with me, because thanks to the hard work of Art Director Tracie Martinez, LM looked, as our VP of Graphic Design & Production Pete Seltzer likes to say, “sah-weet” all year. And it also read well with engaging content covering the myriad topics important to this industry. Pretty good work for such a tumultuous year! Shoutout to the entire team. Now let’s see what we can pull off in 2021!

I hope your 2021 goals are more ambitious than mine, and I hope you have no problems knocking them off your list, one at a time. And honestly, despite what Dr. Rick says, if we all acted like our parents a little more, that would probably be a good thing.

Except for taking calls on speaker phone in public — that just makes you look crazy.