For about six or seven years, I began making themes, not resolutions, for the new year. Themes must be well-researched, meaningful, and personal. Each year, I choose a theme that encompasses my overall goal or wishes for the upcoming new year. Here are a few to illustrate my point:
2000: Boom
Self-explanatory. Beginning a new millenium is a gi-normous deal and, back then, was as single as a dollar bill and intended to live out my college days in quite the explosive manner at Dana’s (a dive bar on Montgomery Road in Cincinnati). Oh, how I did.
2001: Onward and Upward
Ahh yes, the XU graduating year. I was off to live in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps near Seattle and fleeing the midwest in search of my vocation and identity. I didn’t realize that those are often life long journeys, but aimed my sights high and headed west.
la…la…la…
2007: Spectacular
All decisions had to have the high probability of this result.
2008: Faithfulness
Ye be not confused with fidelity! Faithfulness was about a vow to keep true to myself and to stay close to what I knew to be true: 1) All cars are made to be broken 2) God exists 3) You can’t win the lottery unless you play
2009: Make 2009 Your Time
A few weeks ago, my left arm handcuffed to the couch (kidding, I was in surgery recovery period), I watched an absurd amount of television and movies. As my eyes began to glaze over and dry out yet again from the winter air, I perked to attention as I heard a commercial speak into my living room, “Don’t you think it’s your time? Make 2009 your time and quit smoking…”
My ear canals closed after the word “time” and I quickly dismissed the fact that it was a commercial to help people stop smoking and answered the first question, “Don’t you think it’s your time?”
YES! It IS my time!
Make 2009 your time.
I don’t smoke and that’s irrelevant. The larger point is that 2009 is going to be MY time. The time of unprecedented goals and unimagined success. It’s all going to start this year, my friends.
I shared my new theme with Nick who is always up for hearing my new philosophies. “That’s great, babe!” Which is the exact same response when I cook a new recipe, bring home a new box of Texas toast, paint a new abstract painting, share with him a freshly polished poem, clean off the coffee table, announce I’m finally ready to go somewhere, load the address into Moses (our GPS), remind him my birthday is coming up (2.27), inform him that I scored outrageously high on an informal internet IQ test, got a new job interview, or stapled a new calendar to our bulletin board in our office. Whatever I do, to Nick, it’s “great!”
So, if you watch you televisions closely and hear an anti-smoking commercial, try and find the one where you hear someone tell you to, “make 2009 your time.”
You’ll see. It’s empowering.
“It’s great!”