My general thoughts on new year’s resolutions pretty closely echo those of fellow Iowan Romelle Slaughter II (sidenote: I really want to meet Romelle someday. He seems like a really interesting person /sidenote). I hate new year’s resolutions. I really do. For a long time I would create some resolutions, and then either lose interest or just flat out fail to follow through on a vast majority of them. It was always pathetic, and I would just get more and more discouraged with every year.

Then, sometime in the middle of this year, my wife put together a little project for her and the kids. Everybody had to think of some things they really wanted to learn or do, and they would put those things on a list, and then work really hard at accomplishing/learning/completing those things. Caleb starting learning about our founding fathers, Alex starting learning to write, and Harlyn started learning how not to chew on anything she found on the floor.

The best part about this: it wasn’t “I resolve to change something about myself” and it wasn’t “I want to improve the image that people have of me”. It was just “I want to LEARN or DO something, and I want it to mean something to me”.

They weren’t resolutions. They were simply opportunities. Opportunities to create, to grow, to learn, and to expand.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You could chalk it up to simple semantics and say that really, that’s the same thing as resolutions. And, I’ll admit, it’s pretty close. But for me, it’s all about the perspective. New year’s resolutions to me seem to be things that people create because they want to manufacture an image. They want to change. They want to be different. They don’t like what they are, and they want to try and make themselves into something new.

I can respect that. I’ve felt that way in the past. But I’m going to perfectly honest with you and let you in on a little secret here: I kinda like me. I don’t want to change. I want to create, I want to grow, I want to learn, and I want to expand. But I’m not changing.

The opportunities, to me, is all about personal growth. It’s all about increasing your capacity for being what you already are, not changing yourself into something you’re not.

And the thing that really makes resolutions so incredibly hard to follow through on is that nobody does it. And when push comes to shove, that becomes the crutch. “Oh, it’s okay that I didn’t lose those 20 pounds because nobody ever accomplishes their new year’s resolutions. So it’s fine!” And your failure of a resolution then becomes a membership card into a substantial group of human beings who form one giant support group where it’s okay to fail, because we’ve all been there.

Right? Right.

So, no resolutions for me. These are my new year’s opportunities.

Read at least five recent novels.
Did I mention my fantastic wife got me a Nook for Christmas? Well, she did. I’ve always encouraged others to be excellent readers, and I believe in recent years I’ve fallen rather far behind in my own reading habits. Oh, sure, this year I managed to pick up “The City and the City” by China Mieville, and also “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi, but I’m fairly certain that that’s ALL I read in 2010. But now I’ve already loaded a small handful of novels onto the gleaming surface of my Nook. I’ve started reading Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash“, which, I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t read as of yet. I’ll then be moving on to “Bitter Seeds” by Ian Tregillis and then to “Sleepless” by Charlie Huston. I want to keep up with current trends in the scifi and fantasy world, and I think the Nook is going to help greatly in my accomplishing that.

Learn to cook at least three new dishes.
I make awesome french toast (courtesy of my father). And I can make just about any standard-fare breakfast food. I can also manage to cook up a pound of hamburger without fatally wounding anyone nearby, so that’s a plus. But I just don’t have the culinary chops my wife has, and — great, now I’m thinking about pork chops.

Pork chops.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. My wife is a phenomenal cook, and I want to attempt to have at least .05% of her talent in the kitchen. To that end, I will be forcing her at plastic knife-point to teach me a few of her recipes, and maybe one or two of my mother’s, because, well, I’m a bit sentimental that way.

Complete at least one creative project every week.
Last year’s substantial Ficly 365 project taught me something very important. And that is, there are simply not enough hours in the day. It also taught me that, with work, family, and other commitments, I just can’t dedicate even a small portion of every day to writing. So, one of my opportunities for next year will be to complete one creative project every single week. It may have something to do with my comic, or writing, or even music. I’ve considered taking up painting, and we’ll see where that takes me. But every week, something new and potentially interesting will be coming out of my head. For those keeping track, that means by this time next year, I’ll be working on project number fifty-two.

So, there they are. My new year’s opportunities. (sidenote: please note that each opportunity says “at least” within it. I’m perfectly fine with going over the allotted number, but not so much with the being under /sidenote)

Now, here’s the clincher. Here’s the thing that sets opportunities apart from resolutions.

I want to do these things. I really, really want to.

Not because they will change how people perceive me, and I so look forward to shoving the New Me™ in their faces. No. I want to do these things because they will combine to make me even more incredibly awesome than I already am.

And that’s what I look forward to. Being. More. Awesome.

“Semantics”, indeed.