Where Do I Begin?

Everyone always writes sappy crap about what the previous year has brought, and how this new year is going to be a year of...I dont know...freaking wonderful stuff or something. Everyone is always glowing with anticipation of this new unwrinkled future. I kind of feel that way myself, but I don't want to glow. This "glowing" reminds me of when I was a kid in Kentucky spending time with my grandparents for the summer.

My cousin, brother, and I would always stay a few weeks in Somerset. My grandparents lived in the country, and in the evening we would sit on the front porch with opened Mason jars and wait. We waited for the lightening bugs to come out to play. These little magical bugs would appear slowly at first...a blink here, and a blink there. Then all of the sudden, they would be everywhere. The boys and I would run around the yard jumping and shouting in the night air, with nothing but the echo of our voices and the crickets making noise. After a few minutes we would begin our attempts to catch a lightening bug. I can remember sealing the Mason jar, and staring at the bug so close that my nose touched the glass. No matter how many air holes we poked in the metal lids of our jars, the little burst of light never made it to morning. Instead of waking to a continued magic, we woke to nothing but a shallow vessel filled with silenced insects. The romance had worn thin through out the veil of our summer night, and left us void.

Maybe this description is kind of dramatic, but I find it a fitting illustration. I don't want to wake up on Dec. 31, 2010 feeling void from another year filled with hopeful dreams that lay flat in the wake of my real life decisions. The definition of glow is "a light emitted by, or as if by a substance heated to luminosity." Emitted. To give forth, or release. Well, this year...I don't want to give my light away. I don't want to release it. I want it for myself; to last all year long. I want to sustain my motivation that pushed me to make resolutions for myself.

After thinking it through, I have decided on some personal goals for myself this year. In order to sustain my light, they aren't crazy, out of control, never going to reach when thinking in terms of reality goals. They are simple and meaningful goals that I can take one day to the next, while leaving no luminescence behind. Only leaving "the void" behind to echo in the dark without me.