Ed note: this is my first post of 2012, so I thought I’d write about something of substance. I’m hoping you’ll respond and share your thoughts with me.

res·o·lu·tion   [rez-uh-loo-shuhn]
noun

1. a formal expression of opinion or intention made, usually after voting, by a formal organization, a legislature, a club, or other group. Compare concurrent resolution, joint resolution.
2. a resolve or determination: to make a firm resolution to do something.
3. the act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure, etc.
4. the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose.

I’m not big on resolutions. I feel that as a meme, they are pointless and likely to be broken. While I’m definitely a person of resolve, resolutions just don’t stick. Which is strange, because if you read the definition above, it seems like people should take them more seriously.

Perhaps the most important part of a resolution is the part of the definition that I highlighted in bold, above: firmness of purpose. This particular trait is something we should strive for – the ability to put our minds to something and accomplish it. But as humans we will backslide; being infallible, it’s in our nature to stumble.

Oddly, it’s only in our analysis of the situation that we see that we’ve faltered. If we didn’t have the ability to look back, or the skills necessary to process a situation critically, we’d never assign the value of failure to our circumstances. Cats don’t fail at their goals, neither do rosebushes. Why? Because they can’t assign the values of success or failure. Granted, they probably don’t think up goals to begin with, but for the sake of this post, let’s just pretend that the only thing guiding a rosebush to its intended purpose is the fact that it doesn’t know what failure is. Hush to the peanut gallery.

This year, I’m going to take a queue from my imaginary goal-driven rosebush and try to stop assigning the value of success or failure to the results of my actions. I will try to be more ambiguous about critiquing my own progress, and instead try to accept my experiences as simply a state of being and learning, with a firmness of purpose to keep going in the direction I want. My goal is to stop beating myself up and comparing where I’m at with where I want to be. I don’t know if it will work, but if nothing else, this will be an exercise in acceptance and being gentle with myself, in muting my inner critic as best I can.

I will try to be zen, like a rosebush.

All that said, I do have some goals for this year. They’re softer goals, meaning that as long as I keep them in mind and actively work towards them, I’m not going to be disappointed if I don’t concretely accomplish them 100%. Overall, my goal for 2012 is to grow, and come 2013, I want to be a better person. Even if it’s only by a minuscule amount, I’m still moving in the right direction.

In 2013, I would like to:

• Take at least one cooking class every two months, learning something new.
• Shoot more photos to keep from stagnating, visually.
• Pay off my student loans.
• Avoid drama.
• Learn to express myself better through digital video, and other multimedia arts.
• Write for me, for nothing but personal satisfaction.
• Look into culinary programs for 2013.

What are your goals for this new year? How do you intend to keep moving forward towards them?