clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose

Happy (belated) New Year, Interweb. I stole this photo from The New Yorker's Book Bench because it's a nice image for the new year, and I suppose a nice image for the day since, optimistically speaking, what is a year but 365 clean slates.

I probably make too many resolutions on too frequent a basis, so in 2011 I'm only really resolving to work out with more frequency, read a lot, do another long-distance run, get more freelance clients, go on a writers' retreat, retake the GRE (ugh), continue exploring different corners of Chicagoland—an extension of my 2010 goal to venture beyond the usual haunts, travel, get more sleep, practice guitar, cook at home more often, do laundry with more frequency (like, more than once every 1.75 months—embarrassing 29-yr-old admission, but true), spend less time online and more quality time with people in-person, learn better ways to cope with stress, and go easier on myself in general, which of course includes letting whatever items on this too-long list that need to slide slide.

Really, that's it. (ha)

It sounds painfully obvious, but the thing about resolutions—and everyone waxes on about this, especially in January, but it's nonetheless a good time to pep-talk ourselves—is that making them means nothing unless we actually rearrange and reprioritize our days in whatever ways necessary to accommodate change. I realize (winter laziness be damned) that there's no way I'll do any of the aforementioned, much less some, unless I shuffle some things around and really put in the time. Even more obviously: post-reshuffling, days are going to look and feel differently, as they should, since "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." And regarding progress, it bears reminding that "No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now." Oh, and did I mention: "THE REST IS STILL UNWRITTEN"?! Ha ha.

2011 has so far included a few trips to the Y and more home-cooked meals, as well as the general tendency to stay up super late watching Friday Night Lights on Roku and wear the same outfit three days in a row. Every day a tabula rasa, no?