My New Year's resolution

I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions. If you want to make a change, why wait to do it? It seems like New Year's is little more than the perfect excuse to procrastinate a little longer, then forget about it all together.

I recently decided to make a resolution, then I realized driving to work this morning that it just happens to be New Year's Eve, the perfect time to take my non-New Year's resolution and make it a New Year's resolution and join in on the fun that making New Year's resolutions seem to be.

I've heard writing down resolutions makes them real and easier to achieve. I desperately want to reach my resolution, so here goes:

I've been out of the country for the last five weeks visiting six South American countries.

I don't speak Spanish (but I can order food and beer and not get lost in a taxi, so I have that going for me), so from almost the moment I landed in Chile, I felt isolated from everyone else as if I was in an invisible prison, unable to communicate with the outside world. Sure, I could get what I wanted, but everything was foreign to me and doing so was a process by itself. I got by, and I had some help in doing so, but not being able to communicate as easily as I was accustomed to was a whole new experience for me.

Since I couldn't communicate with the outside world very easily or often, I had a lot of time to myself. I spent a good amount of this time reading and writing, I'm pretty sure I did more of those two activities the past five weeks than I had in the last five months, despite what I do for a living. But most of the time, I spent thinking, thinking and doing some serious self-reflection.

I started reflecting on my life, where I am and where I'm headed, as I approached my 25th year earlier this year, but my focus at the time had been mostly on my career. In South America, I dug deeper and thought about the person I am and the mistakes I've made up to this point in my life.

I realized I didn't like what I saw, that I'm far from being the person I want to, or should, be.

I also realized that I'm successful in other parts of my life: I have a near perfect GPA as I'm one semester away from finishing my master's, my writing is at a really good spot for where I am in my career and the amount of time I've been doing this (16 months), I got pretty much every award that mattered when I was a student at the University of Idaho and in September, I earned my commission in the Idaho Army National Guard, something I had wanted since I was eight.

The only reason why I've been able to achieve what I have so far is because I work as hard as I can to do the best I can in whatever it is I chose to do. If my best is better than someone else's best and someone wants to give me an award for it, I'll gladly accept it, but that's not what motivates me. Doing the best I can is what does.

So my resolution is simple for the year 2009: I'm going to put the same amount of effort I put into my writing, school work and other ares of my life into being a better person.

Hopefully, I'll like what I see when I look back in 2010.