Happy New Year!

I have an angst-ridden relationship with new year's resolutions. I love making them--I love making goals and lists and schemes for self-improvement. But inevitably, a few weeks into the year, I stop building the good habits I had determined to pursue and pass through some small crisis of disillusionment. Do you find, as I do, that your list always contains certain items? Eat better, exercise more, keep longer and more frequent devotions. Is it really worth setting goals which I will inevitably fail to achieve?


On further meditation, I think it is. I am not a perfectly disciplined person, a fact which often frustrates me. And I have to accept that I never will be a perfectly disciplined person. Discipline is hard, and it isn't achieved overnight. Sometimes I can't seem to achieve it at all. But that's why perseverance is a virtue. Good goals are worth failing to achieve. They're worth pursuing even when they seem unreachable. I need to learn to criticize myself less for failing to achieve goals and focus more energy on continuing to pursue them.

That said, I'm also learning the joys of setting more concrete and achievable life goals. Recently, I've enjoyed crossing a couple small items off of my bucket list--owning skates, knitting gloves--not very important, but encouraging to achieve, nonetheless. Large goals of achieving discipline or skill in new areas are much more approachable when broken down into smaller steps, and I want my resolutions to focus on those smaller steps. Hopefully, by creating more practical lists, I can actually make more progress in the right direction.

I'm also trying to frame larger goals in easier terms. I will never learn to wake up at 6 am every day without fail, but perhaps I can work to build a general habit of getting up earlier--with some exceptions for weekends, break, or late nights. I want to make things a part of my schedule, rather than demanding total devotion to a rigid schedule, which simply isn't practical for me.

So there you have my challenge for the new year: pursue my life goals with discipline, grace, and practicality. And without further ado, here are my resolutions. I'll probably add them to my dreams and plans page.

1. Finish my Oxford application
2. Habitually wake up at or before 7am on week days
3. Keep a food log for a month and use it to reduce carb and sugar consumption
4. Ice skate regularly
5. Start timing my runs
6. Stretch daily
7. Improve my French (work through French for Reading)
8. Work through Wheelock's Latin
9. Keep reading the BBC page daily
10. Creative write regularly
11. Complete a systematic study schedule and take the GRE Literature Test
12. Finish analytical readings of Romans and Hebrews
13. Find a harp to rent in Oxford

I wish you all a happy and blessed New Year!