Resolute

New Year’s resolutions have a bit of a bad wrap. So often they are made with little or no intention of actually following through. I, however, take my resolutions very seriously and have had a fair bit of success with them lately. Last year one of my resolutions was to do my yoga every morning. And, except for six mornings all year, I did do my yoga every morning. I also resolved to interact with humans more. This means resisting my hermit inclinations. If I was asked to do something or go somewhere, I was supposed to say, “yes” unless I really, truly, honestly was unable to do whatever was being asked. For example: I was asked to join a Dodge Ball team full of people I didn’t know. I was supposed to drive a half-hour on a Sunday evening to have balls thrown at me by and with a bunch of strangers. But I did it. And it was even fun. I also went on match.com to meet people. I had no intention of actually dating but then I went and met my Christopher and well… you know the rest. I would say that my resolutions worked out pretty well last year.

And here we are with a new January once again. This year I resolve to write every day. Yoga every morning is nice. It is good for my body and my mind, helps me focus, center and all that stuff. And I love yoga. I hope that it will always be a part of me and that I will continue to be able to bring a yoga mind-set to the way I live. But I don’t feel like I need to be a better yogina. I do, on the other hand, feel the absence of my writing in my life and want to change that. I want to really commit myself to writing more. My goal is not to publish a book or article or poem or even to write well. I just want to get back to writing. Writing about anything and everything. So every morning, instead of my yoga (or possibly some mornings in addition to) I will write for at least 20 minutes.

And this connects to my larger, less tangible resolution. I want to find “direction.” I like massage. It is very nice. I like the people I work with and I like the flexibility it gives me. However, I don’t want to be doing massage full-time anymore. There are other things I want to do. I want work that stimulates and challenges me intellectually and I want work that has both a future and room for growth. I am very glad that I focused on massage this year, but I feel that I am ready to move on. And where I would like to move on to is writing and editing. I want to work for a magazine as something like an assistant editor and/or do writing or editing on a project basis for companies, organizations or people who need help with that. Actually, I guess that is pretty tangible.

Lastly, I resolve to run faster. I think it is good to have a concrete fitness goal. If I don’t then it is terribly difficult for me to exercise at all. Lately my fitness goals have been to simply complete some extremely difficult event where there is a question as to whether or not I will even be able to finish – like running a 15K or finishing the Donner Lake Triathlon. I’m good at driving myself to be able to finish something grueling. I’m not good, however, at sprinting. It is hard and uncomfortable and not fun at all. So I think I should work at it. I won’t disclose numbers because they are embarrassingly slow, but I would like to be able to run a 5K (3.1 miles) in a certain amount of time that seems quite fast to me. I’m giving myself until September or October.

So there they are, my New Year’s Resolutions. Committed down to “paper” and everything.