CREATE // 2014

So resolutions....

I've been thinking about my resolutions for 2014 and I was having a terrible time settling on resolutions that made sense for me. I prefer to make short term goals throughout the year. I prefer to be constantly evolving and growing, and what I want or need changes constantly. I was having some serious resolution commitment issues.

I started thinking about my options.

I could have resolutions that I know I would keep (blog consistently, travel, give back, laugh every day, read x number of books this year). These are all things that I do anyway, and I knew that I would be successful if these were my resolutions. But it's not the point of making resolutions; to be successful. The purpose is to grow. To be a better version of yourself, not the same version of yourself. To me, making these types of resolutions feels the same as writing things on a to-do list that I've already done just so that I can cross them off (guilty).

...Or I could make resolutions that sound like good ideas but I know are things that I would never be successful at (keep my house clean, stop buying dresses, run every day, run ever if I'm not being chased, don't eat peanut butter cups for breakfast, organize anything in my life). These are the resolutions that we are supposed to make for ourselves... only to fail and have a "well resolutions are stupid anyway" conversation with other people who have failed their resolutions too. Setting myself up for failure wasn't appealing to me. Yeah, no thank you.

I started feeling like I was making resolutions because it was something that I "should" do. And I've written about doing away with should-ing. Call it a spontaneous 2013 resolution.

So this year, instead of making resolutions, I am choosing a word for the year. My word for 2014 is create.

I am happiest when I am creating something; when I am reaching deep into myself and putting what I find there down on a canvas or into a poem, into writing, into a photograph. I need to be creating or I will lose myself. Again. And 2014 isn't for losing myself. It's for making beautiful things. Looking at the world around me, soaking it in like a sponge.

Living. Breathing. Observing. CREATING.

2014 is going to be so beautiful
because I am going to make it beautiful.



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