not the new year.

It's October 15, so a great time for new resolutions, right? I am too impatient to wait for January 1st.

1) I am not going to answer "How are you?" with "Busy!" any more. Being busy does not make me special and it generally means I'm overcommitted.

2) I am going to continue to shed volunteer obligations that do not actually feed my spirit, heart, or intellect. I do not owe anything to organizations that do not know how to utilize volunteers effectively and/or make us feel welcome and valued.

3) I want to get back into writing again, and reading again, as pleasures I have left on the shelf for several years due to a lack of brainspace. Those of you who Facebook know about my recent addiction to the Poetry Foundation website, and I try to spend at least five minutes on it a day meeting new poems and poets through the "random" button. I've got at least one novel and one play in my head that I'd like to begin work on within the next six months, and some scholarly interests as well.

4) I want to be where I am when I'm there, with the people I'm with. I've been working on the "Be Here Now" principle for a few months now and I'm making a little headway, but it stays on the important goals list. I've just finished a book called "Hamlet's Blackberry" and one of the ideas proposed is an Internet sabbath for the family, which I think is brilliant. We'll see if I can convince Matt to implement it too, but I think it would make a world of difference as far as my own attention span goes. I am bringing too much of my work into my home life and vice versa, and need to work on my concentration skills in order to work more deeply on projects in the months ahead.

5) And while I'm thinking of it: I have the intention of writing snail-mail letters to people on my mailing list before Christmas instead of generic cards or e-greetings. I genuinely like special writing tools and fancy papers, and a little thoughtfulness every day would be a lot better for me than a big burden of obligation in late November. There, I've said it aloud in the blogosphere, so now it's official!