It's that time of year again. A time of renewal, of rebirth. A time to consider where we've been and where we want to go, what we want to do, and what we came close to doing. Last year involved some pretty big changes - we moved to a new city. Catherine found a new job. We bought our first home. I started playing music again. We hung out in cool places with old friends (thanks, Jeff and Amy) and we met lots of really great new friends (thanks, Emily, Mat, Marlene and The Jones). Yes, in retrospect, 2004 was a great year. Life has been good.

But now that we're settled in DC, there are still some lingering regrets . . . some areas of my life I neglected . . . some things left undone . . . or, rather, not begun. For one thing, my postings on this blog have been far fewer and far between than I would have liked. All you have to do is check out the amount of times I posted something in December - a glaring zero - to see that I've become somewhat complacent. Aside from the blog, my off-line writing went through some prolific periods in 2004, but ended on a less than stellar note. The entire home-purchasing experience, while a necessary and positive step forward for us, really stressed me out and left me barren of any creative impulse whatsoever.

So here are a few resolutions for the new year:
1) No more cable TV. It's going away. We're calling Comcast tomorrow and canceling it. I'm tired of opening myself up to the fear and marketing machine that is TV. We pay way too much money to Comcast to allow them to slowly main-line their drug to us, a fatal cocktail of 12-minute narcotic programming followed by 3-minute, high-potency advertising. This first resolution is really key to all that follow.
2) Write more. Whether I blog more or not is irrelevent, but I do want to write more.
3) Since October, I've been terrible about working out. So I'm going to get back to it in the New Year. This one is a cliche, isn't it? I'm going to go to the gym more. But usually this one is not a problem for me. It's only been recently that it's been an issue. Now, I do have a tendancy to take working out to an unnecessary extreme, so I want to be careful not to become compulsive about it, but I do need to get back to a more regular schedule, if for no other reason than to help ease the dull pain in my back that wakes me up in the early hours of the morning.
4) Read more fiction. These days, I mostly read magazines. It's time to get back to a better regime of literature.
5) Do more with my photos. I don't have a problem taking photos, I only have a problem when it comes to doing something with them!
6) Play more music. I'm off to a good start with this one . . .

So there it is. Some resolutions for the New Year. Maybe having them in writing will help with their execution!

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