Do You Have a New Year’s Resolution?

I’m working on my print column for this month’s book page of the Catholic Post, and since my theme for January is “New Year” and books on things people might have resolutions about, I was searching around for information about the most common New Year’s Resolutions.  Wikipedia has a moderately interesting article here, but what I loved was the image from the page (above), of a postcard from the early 1900s.

Now, liturgically speaking, I know that the “New Year” starts on the first Sunday of Advent, so talking about a “New Year’s Resolution” from a Catholic perspective, we are actually a few weeks late.  But since culturally here most people do make resolutions starting the calendar year (you know, a new calendar, a fresh start), I thought it would be fun to talk about our new year’s resolutions.

With all my writing about New Year’s resolutions and books related to it, I actually have not made any official resolutions.  A number of bloggers write about how they choose a word for the year.  You can read an example from last January of how Elizabeth Foss writes about the trend and her word.  I have long been completely terrified of doing this, primarily because of how dramatically different the past five or six years have been in our family’s life than my expectation of each year, both for good and for ill.  So I think I will stick with the basic personal New Year’s resolutions for now.  I’m pretty goal-oriented, so having specific things in mind (clean out a room, sign up and train for a race), is more appealing to me.

So inspire me.  What is your New Year’s Resolution?   What’s your word for the new year?  (Note I’m not against other people choosing a word of the year, just “me!”)  Do you avoid making resolutions?  Share away!