The new year is so often saddled with an almost impossibly heavy weight such as it harboring the coming of change and the idea proliferated by many that it is a new beginning, a new start that will inevitably make us all better caretakers of our own lives, yet more daring people within it. This is inevitably proven untrue and the booming profitability of gyms and health food stores--to the ire of their usual clientele--during January and their eventual drop off the month after can attest to this. However, we may be artists, poets, innovators, and revolutionaries in our dreams, it is up to us as individuals to render our plans with small stepping stones that lead to our ultimate goals. If I ask anything of anyone this year, it is to please try and be kind to yourself. Small victories lead to the big ones, do not skip those little steps before you run. I promise you will be much happier if you do. So don't add extra pressure just because it's a new decade. We always do that and it never becomes how we hope to shape it, instead the historians and pop culture movers morph it into something resembling it at its most exaggerated form. Chill, it's just going to be another day like every day. We have no control over anything really, as individuals, but as people, we can change the world however we see fit. So, little steps, if you want to get there.

With that, here are my (in no particular order) personal New Year's Resolutions for the year of 2020:

1. To move away from the big city and live a more quiet life with my family, one that doesn't lose any spice, but simply finds more to add into the pot.

2. To disengage with that omnipresent force known as social media and all its trappings. Even if it has provided me opportunities with my writing that I believe may have been glossed over otherwise.

3. To read more (always).

4. To have a better relationship with my mother.

5. To reflect more, choosing silence over instinctual participation within unfavorable conversations. I am a hot-blooded mess with three Sagittarius humans (including me) in the house and I am told that is recipe for disaster, so I must control my temper. We all mean well, of course, but we all can do better.

6. To spend less money on frivolous pursuits.

7. To get paid for my writing down the road. I'll keep saying it until it happens.

8. To be the father for my son that I would never have.

9. To be the man for my wife and son that I would never see.

10. And finally, to get back into the gym. My pants are getting far too tight and I think chasing after my glory days is something I could still accomplish. So long as I don't sneeze, causing my lower back to ache with a sharp pain, bringing me down to my knees in front of my concerned wife. If avoided, I should be good, then. Right?

Good luck to you in achieving your goals, if you have any at all. And if you don't, thats okay, too. In the end, the mark of the new year is arbitrary anyhow. What matters is that you pull yourself up when you fall, disinfect the wound when you're cut, and press on against the colossal winds that are perpetually pushing you into the opposite direction. I believe in you and I believe in myself. That's all there is to it. I hope.

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