There are many different opinions on resolutions, and criticism ranges from “they only lead to failure” to the very grumpy “it’s lame.” Personally, I like them. Its a nice time to take stock and see where I am. Last year was a gigantic kick in the nuts, and even if January 1st is an arbitrary date, it’s nice to have a fresh start and shake off some of the bad feelings from the past year. Plus, when I write them on the internet, the resolutions have to come true, because everything is true on the internet.

So here we go.

1. Be nicer to me. This one is tough, because I am pretty hard on myself, but it only gets in the way of doing things I love. So enough of that.

2. Make time for my eyebrows. Sounds silly, but when they look good, I feel awesome.

3. Stop apologizing for things out of my control and stop apologizing for choices I am making. This is related mostly to changing careers last year, and feeling like I need to explain why I am leaving the world of helping people to enter the world of pretty. Sometimes it feels shallow and like the work isn’t “good” enough, but eff that noise.

4. Let people go. I hang on to the gross residue of someone who has hurt me or made me feel bad about myself. I think about what they would think of me now, and it’s just dumb and I need to stop it. People who have treated me badly get no more room in my head or my heart.

5. Learn how to tie-dye. My inner Eugene, Oregon self wants to get all up in there.

6. Find a fashion program that I love and do it.

7. Start a weekly ritual. I heard about doing this on a few other blogs, and I like the idea of having one, unchanging thing in life that I can depend on. I travel a lot so schedules are hard to coordinate, but carving out time to roast a chicken or take a class sounds pretty fantastic.

8. Climb a mountain. Ideally Mt Kinabaloo or Mt Fuji, but I am up for any mountain I can scramble up.

9. Make more friend-only time with Tiff. We work together so much, which is awesome, but now its all “Bloggy-blog-blog-pretty-fun-bloggy-blog-mcblogalot” when we hang out.

10. Work my ass off. I have a long list of things I want to do this year and it will take a helluva lot of work to get it all done. I’m up for it.

11. Spend more time with animals. They make me so happy.

12. Learn to make Gram’s french bread.

13. Stop worrying about fitting everything thing into a nice little box. I was going to stop at 10 resolutions, but life doesn’t wrap things up nice and tidy. I am going to start celebrating the things that are messy and weird, because so am I. (You should see the bedhead right now.)

Hooray for this year, and hooray for that little kick in the pants to get it all moving.