I Resolve…

The blog is back!

After a couple of months off and thinking long and hard about whether to alternate posts on Everyday Intensity between intensity/giftedness topics and writing topics, I’ve decided to start writing here again, for the very reason I began this blog in the first place: To help me to be a better and more disciplined writer.

My friend Hannah wrote on her blog, Alimental, today, “I’m taking these last couple days in December to think of the improvements I’d like to make in 2011. I love making resolutions. It feels so optimistic.”

Something I’m learning about myself is that I, too, love making resolutions, planning for the future, allowing my thoughts to leap ahead to exciting possibilities. At the same time, I have to be careful. My resolutions are most successful when they are simple and pared down, when they contain within them what I need to continue growing without setting up unrealistically high hurdles or complex mazes that will only leave me frustrated and discouraged.

So this year I’m setting clear and simple resolutions for the areas of my life that are important to me, resolutions that allow me to see growth not in terms of reaching a final destination but rather continuing the journey, resolutions that get me moving in some way, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

My writing resolution? It’s wonderfully simple. I’m going to participate in the WordPress DailyPost challenge for 2011, posting something here every day of the coming year (I’ll continue to post on Everyday Intensity once or twice a week). I won’t promise every post will be brilliant or lengthy, but I do commit to the daily act of writing about writing for 365 days, knowing that, along the way, more specific directions and goals will emerge. As Joanna Penn reminds us, “Blogging is fantastic for accountability!” (Be sure to take a look at Joanna’s review of her 2010 goals–now that’s discipline!)

I don’t make new year’s resolutions every year, but 2011 feels like a resolution year to me.

Does it feel like one for you? If so, be sure to give yourself permission to make resolutions your way, whether they be numerous or few, big or small, complex or simple, grand or ordinary, laid out in a spreadsheet or written on a napkin, kept to yourself or committed to a blog.