New Year, New You!

I think the key to being able to stick to your resolution to get up and go for a run on the morning of January 1st -- in spite of any wee-hours-of-the-morning New Year's Eve celebration you may have engaged in the night before -- is to start running five days a week on December 1st so you're already in the habit come New Year's Day. Granted, I was in slower motion this a.m. than I have been the past four and half weeks, but I had a cup of tea and a bit of pastry for some fuel and then went out there and did my miles. I saw a few other runners in the park, and on the way back, through the half a mile or so of neighborhood streets between the park and our apartment building I passed a woman walking her dog, bundled against the cold in a long puffy coat. She complimented me as I ran by: "Good for you!" Ha, ha, thanks, I thought, but it's not a New Year's resolution or any wherewithal on my part, just a habit developed through the preceding month of December that got me out there, really.

I love New Year's Day and New Year's resolutions. As usual, I have a slew of goals and projects for 2015 and I enjoy taking advantage of the new calendar numbers to schedule these things and plot them out. Also as usual, I don't necessarily talk about my resolutions. I guess that may seem strange to some people who hate New Year's resolutions, or maybe even to people who like them, too; they wonder if I'm so fond of the whole thing why I don't want to declare them. It's funny: for as unabashed as I am in putting my analysis of the world and life opinions out there, I'm actually more of  private person than people realize about my personal life and self. I do not need everyone to know my innermost thoughts, goings-on, goals, progress reports, etc. Because I'm so willing to talk about so many things, lots of people think they know me, but then those people are sometimes very wrong in the conclusions they draw about me based on the not-personal stuff I've said that they assumed explains everything about me.

Some people, however, are not like me and they DO like to talk all about their personal stuff and other people's personal stuff and about their New Year's resolutions and goals, and if you're one of those people I by all means encourage you to share. It is indeed fun to, for example, have a project and then blog about it month by month as you work your way through. I may or may not do some blogging about my various 2015 endeavors as I get into them.

But I think that's part of the key, too: getting into them. There is one school of thought that says when you have a goal, be it weight loss or quitting smoking or writing your novel or whatever new ambition you're undertaking, you should declare it so that friends and family can "hold you accountable" and support you. The thinking is that putting it out there -- out loud -- means you can't back away from it because now you've said you're going to do it, so you have to do it, unlike if you just said it to yourself.

Me? No. That's not my school of thought. For one thing, why is making a promise to yourself any less important than making the commitment in front of other people? It's like, have some self-respect, am I right? I care more about my integrity than about what others think of me. I am the person who didn't tell a damn soul I was quitting smoking until I was weeks into the quit. and no way did I say that I had quit until months had gone by. I am the complete and total opposite of declare-so-others-can-check-up-on-you. Hell, no. Mind your own business! Now, eleven years later, I tell anyone who will listen (and a few people who won't) all about my quit smoking process, which by the way I think is genius. But then? It was like a two-year process, and it was not something I had any interest in discussing until a long time had gone by and I was sure it had worked. I am very much about doing my thing and I do not need other people involved in my thing. I have so many projects -- I'm like a duck floating on the water, and my projects are the feet flapping underneath that keep me moving through life that everyone on the surface might not ever see or know about. I have personal goal projects going all the time. And with every New Year's Day, I like to add a few more. And then maybe next year I'll tell you about them.

Feel free to share your resolutions here -- if you're one of the sharers, that is!

Happy New Year to all.