The Dawn Has Come

A new year is upon us. The “Year Everyone Died” has come to pass and we find ourselves standing in the doorway of another 365-day period of unknown possibilities and as-of-yet-unknown goings on. Resolutions are being made and broken as I write this very blog. People’s gym memberships are being ignored or forgotten, diets are being railed by fatty foods and alcohol, and people with hopes of being a better version of themselves tomorrow have already opted to stay in competition with the asshole they were yesterday. The “New Year, New Me” phrase is so over played that the track on the other side of the tape is beginning to intermingle with it. New year, new me and spring break whoops and hollers during a round of topless beach boxing beer pong are starting to sound like the same thing. So why do we make New Year Resolutions at all if the majority of them are forgotten by the second week of February? For this lesson I turn to Wikipedia.

For anyone too busy to read it, unconcerned with its contents, or unaware of the fact that the word “Wikipedia” is indeed a link to the Wikipedia page in question, I will give a brief summary. A New Year’s Resolution is, as we all know, a tradition in which a person resolves to change something about themselves, be it a habit, trait, behavior, whatever. That’s the part we are all familiar with. This has some interesting origins though. Many are religious, but I personally like the medieval application where a knight took the “peacock vow” at the end of the Christmas season to reaffirm his commitment to chivalry. Some polls have been done, studies have been conducted, but if you want to know about that, you should read the article.

I have never set a New Year’s resolution for myself, but this year I’m going to try it. This year I want to actually put my mind to something and follow through with a finish on some level. That may sound pretty broad, but I have a lot of hobbies and interests, so I have to leave it kind of broad. The end result remains, I want to complete something for myself. This is something I’ve been struggling with for a long time. I start projects and stories and what have you and eventually they all become nothing more than a heap collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. This year, I want to try to finish something. It won’t be the Mustang, that would be financially unreasonable, but there are plenty of other things I have to choose from. Perhaps a story concept will become a completed first draft for the first time since I was 15. Still kicking myself for not maintaining a copy of that story. It was great for having been written by a kid. I have several to choose from, I just need to pick one and finish it. Even if it sucks harder than a Kirby vacuum cleaner, having a finish first draft will be a massive improvement over where any of my ideas currently sit.

So there it is, my first ever official New Year’s Resolution: FINISH SOMETHING.

Something other than this blog post.