New Year's Wish

I really love Neil Gaiman's New Year's Wish (as delivered at Symphony Hall in Boston):

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

New Year's Resolutions

Boy, there is a part of me that hates making resolutions. Maybe it's the simple fact that I've written some resolutions in the past and haven't necessarily followed through with them.

It's embarrassing to say the least, but I guess that I shouldn't let that stop me from trying again. Which brings me to my first resolution.

1. I will not let fear control my choices. (This one is an all encompassing subject. I could actually just leave the list at this one and feel like my bases are mostly covered.)

2. I will not avoid doing things out of laziness.

3. I will be open to change.

My list was actually a lot longer when I started writing them down this morning, but then as I typed, I realized that these 3 are all I need. I often wonder what it was in my younger life that made me who I am today.

I find that I sometimes think and rethink things and hesitate to take action because of fear. I become afraid of losing what I have, of looking stupid, of stepping outside my comfort zone. And I hate it.

One way or another, I am going to find a way to change my life. Now.