This is my favorite week of the year.  It’s officially winter, Christmas madness is over, and I look inward instead of outward.  I visualize how I want my new year to unfold.  It doesn’t matter how many people around me are cynical about resolutions and new beginnings, they are powerless to spoil my favorite time of year.

In truth, the new year doesn’t really begin for me until after my birthday on January 6th.  Known to some of you as Epiphany.  This year I will be 44 years old.

I’m breaking into this stream of thought to announce that I have accidentally discovered what Sriracha and cinnamon taste like together and I can tell you it’s nasty.

Setting resolutions isn’t, for me, about success or failure.  A million things can happen to take us on a different path than we imagined, making our resolutions obsolete or less important.  Maybe they’re really important but it wasn’t time to smack down on those particular issues we thought we were ready to deal with.  Resolutions are one way to get square with ourselves, to acknowledge things we don’t like about ourselves or ways in which we are letting ourselves down.  It’s a chance to recognize where improvements could be beneficial and to declare an intention to address weaknesses.  Even using those words make it sound negative.  It doesn’t need to be.

Get square with yourself.  Be honest with yourself.  Be raw with yourself.

Bottom line – even if you don’t share your inner conversation with anyone else – being honest with yourself is the best way to start any new year, new chapter, new venture, or new project.  No one else needs to be in on your inner dialog, but have it.  Start the year with total honesty.

If you’re being mean to yourself then you aren’t tapping into the truth yet.  The truth might be hard but its voice isn’t the one you use to flog yourself with.  It’s straight, but allows all kinds of angles to flourish.  What you do with truth is up to you.  Abusing yourself is punishment that you perceive as a deserved consequence of something you see as negative in yourself and isn’t about the truth itself.  Being honest is neutral.  It’s only scary because of how you might use it against yourself or against others.

I am tackling only one major thing this year.  All else follows behind it.

• Going temporarily sober.  I believe (and will find out if I’m right) that getting my drinking situation under control (sober first, then we’ll see) will solve a number of other problems.

• Lose weight.  But not as I generally set it out as a goal.  The sobering up will enable this and if I can succeed at losing enough weight then it will support healthier drinking and eating habits and will feed on itself going forward.  It’s really the same as the sobering up.  They are obnoxiously interconnected goals.

• Developing a strict daily writing schedule.  I want to wake up at 5:30am and write until 7am when I have to wake the kid for school and get him ready.  Then social media while eating breakfast.  Then a minimum of 3 more hours writing.  Every single day.  Even weekends if possible.

Apparently when I say “one” I really mean three.

There are at least a hundred little things I could list as goals and things I want to do or accomplish this year.  I still have a few days left to consider making a list of minor intentions for the new year.  So for today I’ll leave it at the three important ones.

I wonder if anyone has ever put “Become a porn star” on their new year resolutions list?