It is now 2008, and I wish you all the best for it.

I’ve been asked by all the friends who shared the ringing of the new in last night about new years’ resolutions I might have.

I tend to be very abstract, and can’t really put an exact goal down, and have always felt a bit pressured to make something sound important and amazing without being pretentious. I plan to lose two stone or climb a mountain or travel more or read better books… These are all kinds of things I’d like to do, and might. But I don’t want the added pressure of people knowing, especially because most people wouldn’t remember anyway.

I am blessed enough to have friends who would remember, actually, and that makes me even more disinclined to set a list of resolutions. For a particular friend, her last year’s resolutions all turned out to be blessings, and she fulfilled them. I think she’s amazing, and wish her all the best for this years, and I can see how, to her, the resolutions are challenges and exciting possibilities.

Unfortunately, any resolutions I might put down tend to carry with them the taint of guilt. Thoughts of: “oh, that was too much food, that’s another resolution lost” or “why am I reading this, I thought I was trying to better my mind…?” are more prominent than the excitement of challenges.

So, I won’t be making any resolutions for this year. Instead, I will try to focus more on the actual idea of meeting challenges, and work on a fundamental difference between me and resolutions themselves. If I resolve to to something, it becomes a chore, and I want to change that perception.

So, although that sounds very much like a resolution, I hope you’ll forgive me for being abstract even about something as inane as New Year Resolutions, and wish you all the best and blessings in 2008.