I’m afraid of commitment, so I don’t make New Years resolutions. I do make resolutions, but not New Years ones. A year is a long, long time after all, and six months in I might change my mind. Making a decision? Oh, not me. Do you know how long it takes me to pick out a bag of chips? I mean, what if there’s a better flavour? What if I change my mind?
But I am a planner. I make one month plans, I make one week plans. And now I feel the need to make a one year plan. “Like New Year’s resolutions?” my coworker asked, when I told her this.
“No. Well… yes. No. It’s different.” I mean, it’s a plan, not a wish, right? That’s different, right?
I’ve got a whole list of plans by now, and the whole things scares the pants off of me when I think about it, which means I can’t think about it right now because I’m in public. I guess I’ll chance it. Maybe the boots will keep the pants in place.
I have financial goals–pay off my car, for instance. I have health goals–losing weight, of course. I mean, it was working before Christmas, it should work now. I have writing goals–a stack of them. I plan to publish for the first time in 2014, and this scares me even more than my list of goals. I also have a goal of how many books I want to read, and on what subjects. And, best of all, my sister and I have planned a trip for the summer when the plant shuts down.
I’ve heard it said that “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, but they wildly underestimate what they can do in ten years”. And I suspect this may translate into months as well. What could I accomplish in twelve months if I deliberately planned this out? When I began writing a to-do list for the week, it was because I was tired of forgetting things. In one year, you can forget a lot. I don’t want to forget the things that were important at the beginning of the year. I don’t want a year to go by haphazardly, because time is the most important resource I have. I don’t want my money to go to the wind, because I spend far too much time to get it. I don’t want to finish another year without progress in my fitness, because after a few of those years I’ll wish I’d taken better care of myself. I want to finish the year with better relationships, and new ones.
I want to thrive in 2014.
2013 was a hard year, and I’ve come through with scars on my body and on my heart. I am sorry for the bitterness that has taken root in my soul, and for the spiritual complacency that I see in myself. I’m sorry it was necessary to spend so much of my year at work, because it seems to have strained my relationship with my family. I’m sorry I spent so much money on myself. I wish I’d saved it, or spent it on others.
I don’t want 2014 to end like that.
And so, I resolve to plan. I guess I’ll finish the plan tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow.
Geralyn Wichers 
I’ve only had one resolution that i actually completed and that lasted a year. I promised myself and God that i wouldn’t date anyone for an entire year. It was the hardest but best year of my life. I gave up almost everything that year. It started with the guy i was dating then my church, then my friends. But the next year God gave me everything back x10. I started dating my future husband. Got new friends that cared about me. Started attending a church that i could grow in and i had a year of good people surrounding me and helping me heal from my past wounds. So, resolutions aren’t so bad…they can bring a lot of pain but also a lot of joy.
I just heard Ravi Zacharias’ “Just a Thought” for January 1st on having a mission statement for your life. That would be a good place to start- and I believe that likely is part of your motivation for setting goals. Thanks for the reminder to make specific, measurable goals…along with smaller steps that make it possible attain them!
Very true. I ‘m afraid my mission statement hasn’t been updated in a while.
The thing about making these resolutions is that we’d have the tendency to slack off, I mean, after all, we all have that supposed deadline after a year, and that’s three-hundred-sixty-five OR sixty-six days, and that, may seem like a very long time, and, people often spent too much time, planning out their lives, their futures, that they ended up, wasting their lives away, that, is why, i’m totally AGAINST making resolutions for the New Year (it’s beyond pointless to me), and i don’t have A-N-Y plans for the future, only goals that I’m going to achieve, and that, is just a thought…
It’s true. A year is a long time, and not a good deadline for building urgency. A one year plan is more of a plan to base my one month plans, which is what I base my weekly to do list off.
Do you talk fast in person? You’re thoughts seem a mile a minute.
Funny you should say that. :). I have been teased by my family I should become an auctioneer. Though in person I tend not to talk much, at least at first.