Time for some resolve

I'm not going to lie, 2008 was a hell of a year and not in the best way. That's why I'm probably a little more excited than usual for the New Year to be here. I know really the turn of the calendar year has no direct impact on our lives aside from having to remember to write a different year on our checks, but I love the idea of using a New Year as a way to make changes or take a fresh start. I definitely could use a fresh start in some areas of my life.

So with that, let's talk about resolutions. I take my resolutions very seriously. I'm proud to say for the first time in several years, I'm not resolving to lose weight. Losing weight is one of the few proud accomplishments I have from 2008, and I'm so excited to be able to say I did it. I am going to commit to staying at a healthy weight and continuing to exercise, but those have to be lifelong commitments and not just a New Year's resolution.

Instead, I've got two resolutions for the year: to simplify, simplify, simplify my life by getting rid of unnecessary junk I've been hauling around from house to house over the past five years or so and to attempt to be more thoughtful of my friends and family.

The first one is self-explanatory. While I don't have tons of clutter, I still have CDs I never listen to, books I've already read and don't plan on reading again, college notebooks that I haven't looked at since I wrote in them last, clothes that I continually choose not to wear. There's no reason not to get rid of it if I can do it in an environmentally friendly way, and there's an environmentally friendly way to get rid of most everything these days. It may take me all year, but I'm going to purge little by little until I'm down to as much of as a minimum as I can get to.

The second pledge I believe I've made before, but didn't do a very good job at keeping. I'm not a mean person, but I do a horrible job at remembering people's birthdays or doing something thoughtful for a friend in need. It's not a willful disregard for others' feelings, I just don't think about these things as quickly as I should. But, I could easily enter my friends' birthdays into my Yahoo calendar and have it e-mail me reminders, so no excuse there. And maybe by consciously making an effort to be more thoughtful it will become second nature.

And for a wild card, I'm going to try to stop thinking so negatively about work, even when it's trying it's very hardest to bring me down. Thinking negatively about it only makes it worse.

So that's my focus for 2009. I'm hoping those resolutions will at least encourage a better year.

What are your resolutions? How seriously do you take resolutions?