Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Here's Comes the Year

I've been paralyzed by the idea of writing the mandatory New Year's post. Normally, the idea of setting goals and achieving new things - represented by piles of completed checklists - excites me to no end. Right now, I'm having trouble even completing a private list of goals for the year, much less a public blog post about it.

I might just be tired of setting goals that I then fail to achieve. But under normal circumstances, even when I don't quite make my target, goal-setting helps provide me with a tangible and motivating record of the things that I have achieved over the last few months.

It's not that I'm not excited about the coming year. I am. I can't wait to see the adventures and stories that the year holds. Maybe, though, it's this excitement that is holding me back from compiling a detailed list of everything that I want out of the year.

I don't know exactly what I want out of 2012. I'm a little afraid to plan. Everything memorable, good and bad, that emerged out of the last few years was completely unplanned. No checklist in the world could have prepared me for what those years held or could tangibly show what I learned and felt and did.

Of course I want to read and write and grow and save and do more. I do have a checklist to help me achieve these things in realistic ways. But what I really want out of 2012 is another year of irreplaceable adventures and memories. And sometimes the important things that make up these lives of ours don't fit well onto a checklist.

Finally, I don't regret any of the moments over the last few years when I was courageous. Even if things didn't turn out exactly the way I expected, I was always glad after I made an irreversible decision or took a blind step.

Even if, in retrospect, my "bravery" looks a little more like stupidity, I have never wished that I had avoided the unknown. So in 2012, I want to be brave. Not just once or twice or occasionally, but for an entire year.

So here's to another wonderful twelve months of memories, good and bad, of checklists, completed and unfinished, of adventures, planned and unplanned.

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