I’m a sucker for resolutions. It’s just who I am, and I find new starts to be a very good thing for people. It’s one of the few times in the calendar year when we can all slow down just a bit and recognize what we can do to make our lives, and the lives of those around us, a little better.

My resolutions this year are a little different than in previous years. My children are at an age now where my successes and failures are very apparent to them (especially H, who’s now 10). Therefore, my resolutions focus more on outcomes for the greater family rather than for me.

That’s not to say that I will not be achieving the personal goals I set for myself; on the contrary, if I meet my greater outcomes, it almost certainly means that I’ve met my personal goals as well. Logically, it would seem that, to succeed for my family, I will need to succeed myself.

So…here they are, in no particular order.

1. I don’t need to write more; I need to publish more of what I write. With the exception of a few weeks where I didn’t do much writing at all at the end of 2006, I am fairly happy with the quantity and the quality of my writing. Now I need to get my work out there. I need to find an agent who can represent both my fiction and my nonfiction writing. I need to get my work out there, circulating, and I need to get paid for it.

2. I need to be home more with my family. I love teaching, and I love where I am teaching, but writing allows me to be home with them much more, and the amount of travel I do when I teach is just too much on me. There are times when I feel as if I am separated from my family, and I get a week with them at Christmas and two months during summer, and that’s it. People keep telling me, That’s Life…get over it. But I can’t get over the fact that I rarely see my family. It’s time for writing to be my primary and teaching my secondary. This puts me home more in 2007, especially later in the year, where I need to be.
3. We need to move. We’ve outgrown our townhouse, and our children need a yard. They need space to play freely and safely in a world they can call their own.

4. I need to continue on my spiritual path toward health and healing. I cannot allow the rush of the busy academic semester coming up to derail me, as it always seems to do. I need to hold on to this discipline, this ritual, this structure, and heal myself so that I may better serve others.

5. All this, I need to do with patience and with understanding. With love and with care, with hope and with belief that all things are possible…

The upcoming new year will undoubtedly bring many highs and lows for us; it’s what we do with them that matters. The Tao says let it flow. Let it all flow, the good, the bad, the mediocre. Let it come, let it go. Offer no resistance to it, and it will do no harm. I’d like to think that, with this short list of resolutions for 2007, this way of thinking, of living, will be possible.

May we all find the strength and the love to make this year all that we know it can be!