my new year's resolution

New Year’s Eve.  It always seems to hit you when you least expect it.  You think that for a moment there’s still a little something to squeeze into a year and then you realize you’ve changed the date at the top of the page.  It takes some getting used to; that nostalgic feeling of newness and the unexpected until it wears off and you’re right back into the groove of another year. 

2011.  This might be the year.  But then again don’t you find yourself saying that every year?  But for me; I’m serious.  I thought it would be 2010.  It was the year I realized that I had a few months left to live it up as a college undergrad.  I could get away with strolling down Kirkwood at ungodly hours of the morning in the middle of the week, and still have that feeling of spontaneity.  It was the year I graduated from college; a feat in its own right.  And it was the summer I started my job and moved to the biggest, craziest, over rated city and attempted to start my life as a professional.

2010 was the year, or so I thought, but yet there was something missing.  My new year’s resolution for 2011; be happy, be more spontaneous, find something that I am overly passionate about and just go with it.  I want to run miles upon miles, I want to cook more, I want to free lance write, I want to take pictures of everything I can but through my eyes so that I can open up other people’s, I want to move back to New England, find a job that makes me happy and a city that doesn’t make me want to hide.  Too many times have I read stories about lives being cut too short or people living with all these regrets and I don’t want to be that person.  I want to live long and hard, so that when the time comes, I know that I have done everything I could have and done it with a smile on my face.

My new year’s resolution? Be happy, because life is simply too short.  And if that calls for a few drastic solutions that I know in my heart are the right decisions, well then, I’ll go with it.  Life isn’t supposed to be planned or written down or filled with to do lists, I want to write the chapters as they come, with as many alternate endings as possible.