I did something to start this year that I rarely do... I went back and read my "resolutions" blog post that kicked off 2015. I was kind of scared. Do any of us really stick to our resolutions? Do any of us keep working out or eating well past January 31st? I broke into a small sweat as I began to read my "resolutions", worried that I hadn't accomplished anything I'd hoped in 2015.
Guess what? Maybe I hadn't stuck to all of my "guns", but I did, for the most part live out that major resolution, that "one little word" I was hoping would guide me last year. You can read about finding my heart of flesh here, but today I'm going to talk about living out my word for 2015. Last year I picked "resolve". I wanted to have resolve in 2015, like a quote I had found that basically stated, "Resolve to let got of everything that isn't making your life better". Can I get an Amen to that? I ended my post last year with this,
"So that next year I'll look back and know, I did everything I could to make it count, with resolve"
When I sat down to think about what I really wanted out of 2016, I kept going back to the same goal. I wanted to write. It seems every year, since I started this blog, my year resolution has included writing. This year especially it seems like writing is what my heart is demanding. While I was living 2015 with resolve, I was also living 2015 away from the keyboard. It's funny but I have little regret about that. There were days that I could have sat in front of my laptop or PC and hammered out some words, but they would have been forced. You would have noticed. There were days where I wrote my heart out, but never hit publish. It was just stuff, just words and nothing more. The truth is that most days, I was just living, with little to no thought about what was happening or not happening on this blog. So days passed, nothing was posted, and at some point I became okay with that. I posted 82 lonely posts in 2015, less than I did in 2011 (100) when I first started this blog, and way less than 2013 (234) when I felt my blog was at it's peak.
So this year my one resolution and my "one little word" is going to be WRITE. Just write. Write it all out. Type it, color it, use a marker or a crayon. I just want to be stringing words along, enough to wrap them around myself like the most comfortable blanket. I want to type, to make music with the pitter patter of the keys. I want to scribble in margins, use highlighters to make corrections, I want fingers stained with ink. I want to write and hit publish. I want to write and never publish. I just want to write. Everyday if possible, even if it's just a lonely sentence about what I ate today.
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I saw this quote the other day that said we don't need resolutions. It said that resolutions imply that there is continuously something wrong with who we are. As if to imply that something is wrong with how we live day to day. I can see that. Why do we feel the compulsion to change ourselves every January? On the flip side, to resolve to do better, to live better, to love better, can never be a bad thing. How can any resolution to make yourself feel better be a bad thing? Maybe resolutions are crap, and maybe picking a word every year is a dumb thing bloggers do to motivate their readers, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm picking a word, and I resolve to do more of that word. Even when I'm tired. Even when I'm busy. Even on February 1st, 2016, when all my friends have forgotten about the gym, the Whole 30 recipes, and the no screen time rules. I'm going to keep writing, even if I never hit that orange publish button that haunts me.
Because even bad writing is still writing.
