( Ushering In The New Year )

This time last year, I was filled with high hopes, clutching a very expensive diary and wondering just how awesome 2012 would be. As it turns out, I was wrong about a whole lot of things when it came to the way last year panned out. You’d think, given that, I would have learned my lesson about how to approach the new year, but no. Here I sit. My diary is not as expensive but I am filled with conviction about this year. And not about how awesome it’s going to be, but rather that it is certainly going to be different. How different, I suppose, is entirely up to me.

And I’ve decided that, this year, unlike many other years, I will have resolutions (or, revolutions, depending on the lie of the land as the year goes on). And in a display of infinite wisdom and compassion, I have decided to share aforementioned res(v)olutions with you, the internet. Be warned. They range from deadly earnest to exceptionally arbitrary and superficial. Such is the dual nature of these things.

Get up in the morning. Do not hit snooze. I repeat, do not hit snooze. Maybe this seems like something absurd, but truthfully, if I don’t get up when the bell goes, I struggle. And I used to be so good about getting up on time in high school - I would just rise like Cinderella, or Sandy from Grease. Effortless, birds singing and a transparent veil-like robe. It will happen.

Write more and write better. Write till my fingers bleed. Chuck Wendig has very helpfully put together a whole list of writerly resolutions that should be read if you’re into that word craft thing. But that’s the gist of it: write all the things. All of them. All the time.

Re-establish a bloody routine, since 2012 ruined my old one. And it’s true. I had a way things worked, week to week, and things I liked to keep to. But being unemployed for a couple of months plays havoc with your life in general. I intend to change that this year and try and make things a whole lot more stable than they have currently been, routine wise.

Exercise. Get up off your ass and jump rope. Do it now. Very cliche, I am aware. But hell, I am full of the fire of my convictions and if that means I move around more regularly than I have been, then that’s a good thing. (Plus, Chuck Wendig says, if you want your mind to work, don’t treat your body like crap.)

Making the whole finances thing work. But like, really work. I’m in a rather interesting position in that I have to do my own tax. No one can truly understand the awkwardness of tax until they have to do their own. But rest assured: tax is the worst. I resolve to be better at it. Better at taxes and saving. Because everyone needs to save.

I resolve to chill out. Seriously, it needs to happen more often. And when I say chill out, I don’t mean go and watch the sunset with a brightly coloured cocktail in hand. I mean that I stress a lot, about next to everything, and I probably need to stop doing that. Before, you know, my heart gives in. Or my blood pressure becomes the second thing from this planet to land on Mars. Relax. That is what I am telling myself. Relaaax.

There they are. Aren’t they pretty? I suppose the queer thing about resolutions of the beginning of the year variety is that people never stick to them. It’s precisely why I have never had them before. I like to imagine in the sheer novelty of having them will ensure I stick to them. If not that, then the sure knowledge that I will probably be laughed at if I let things slide will certainly keep them around. Wish me luck!

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