about hope.

I wrote today. I cranked out 2,000 words in a sitting. Just the start of something. I thought about things I haven't thought about in a long time. And there's no escaping that feeling of having sunk deep inside of yourself. You try to come back out, but the dim light streaks hot in your path and it's too hard to open your eyes wide again.

Now seems to be the time to write about resolutions. New Year, new life, right? I make casual resolutions every year, mostly a dialogue with myself. I don't always write them down. I just say it to myself: I will be better in this way or that. For several years, my only serious resolution was to quit smoking, which I failed at more times than I care to remember. This is the first time in five years that I'm not making that resolution. Seven months smoke free, which is quite surreal.

I know a lot of people think resolutions are stupid, mostly because we don't often keep them. You know, we're all going to go to the gym and drink lots of water and eat only vegetables....but then.

Well, I think resolutions are wonderful things. I don't think we should make them as something to keep, we should make them as something to think. A resolution is an ordering of priorities. It's combing through that internal life and saying this is important to me, and this and this. It's about understanding exactly who you are.

Resolutions also give me new, inspired hope in people. Positive change always exists. Hope always exists. The moment we stop having hope for this world and for one another, we cease to be human. And at the end of the day, I would like to believe that it's actually possible for me to quit smoking, to write more, to practice creativity, to eat new food, to love the people in my life more deeply each day. I do believe it. Really, resolutions are about hope - and I like that.

For some writer resolutions to mull over, check out this post at the Bark.

In one of my notebooks, I've written the following:

1. Start using eye cream (and fight the wrinkles that are surely coming)
2. Walk somewhere on my lunch break every day
3. Submit one creative work somewhere
4. Love with passion and without fear

There you have it. Just some of my hope.