Listen guys. You know I enjoy telling y’all about the minutiae of my life, despite the fact that this habit may some day get me murdered or fired, and has more than once led to uncomfortable encounters with colleagues and family members alike. This doesn’t stop me. My big mouth is unstoppable. And you also know that I enjoy revealing my deepest desires and life’s grandest wishes. Someday I will indeed change the world/run a marathon/write the Next Great American Novel/actually floss my teeth, and I will be happy to share my ups and downs along the way and then write self-righteous advice once I achieve my myriad of goals.

It is December 28th, which means I am thinking about my New Year’s Resolutions. As per usual, I would like to make about 50 and I would like to tell you all about them and then update you as the year rolls on. Accountability is good for goal-making. Also, I am a raging narcissist, so any excuse to talk about myself.

I’ve been trying to talk myself down to 5 or 6 goals, but the ones that I feel really strongly about, the ones that really move me? Well, I just don’t want to tell you about them.

Maybe because I am learning the difference between public and private (haha). Maybe because I am afraid I might fail and would prefer to keep the option of a graceful bow out available without having to confess to you guys that I just suck.

But also, I have reason to believe that now that I have reached an extremely advanced age, I feel comfortable enough in my own skin to believe, deep down, that I can live my life the way I want to live it without making public proclamations. Without turning over a new leaf. I honestly spent many, many years of my life feeling miserable most days of the week because I wasn’t living up to my own standards. I felt lazy, ate the wrong foods, was messy, watched too much TV, didn’t do enough work. I’d write up a little schedule of “my ideal day” at nighttime, and then fail myself in the morning. The self-help solution to this problem would be to practice being kinder to oneself, forgiving of ones own humanness, etc. I did some of that, and I could do some more, but really, I just started living on my own and some time later, I was able to wake up and just DO all the things I wanted to do and be done with it.

I don’t feel that way any more. I rarely have “ideal days,” but most of the time I go to bed exhausted and feeling like I just had a day reasonably well-lived. I don’t need a New Year’s Resolution to help me turn over a new leaf. I’m here, on the other side of the leaf, living.

Some of the things I want to do this year are big and scary. Some of them aren’t “good” resolutions – easy to measure, to work toward. Some I will probably fail at. I think the heart of me is telling me to keep these goals close to my chest this year, to practice intrinsic motivation, to keep on living on the other side of the leaf.

I just read Nova Ren Sum’s post about her 2012 resolutions – she wrote down 7 writing goals in January but didn’t share them on her blog, and just this week revealed her successes and failures. This I love, because her goals were big and burly and there were too many of them, just like my own goals are wont to be. And because she missed the mark on so many, but still admits to a good 2012.

Maybe I’ll do a big reveal in  2014, let you know how things worked out. Or maybe I’ll break down and tell you about every last detail. Maybe I’ve changed a lot, maybe I’ve changed a little. Maybe I’ve got a long way to go, or maybe I’m already there.