Happy New Year!

As my first winter break draws to a close, I'm partaking in one of my favorite New Year's traditions: watching "The Twilight Zone" on the SyFy channel.  Back in high school, my brother and I discovered "The Twilight Zone" marathon, and I've enjoyed watching it every year since.  I remember the first year when my brother and I stayed up for hours, watching every episode on New Years Day, having never really seen the show before.  "The Twilight Zone" struck me as being much better than I expected, with stories that are original, characters that are realistic, and satire that is biting. 

What I find most interesting about "The Twilight Zone" is that even when the world goes absolutely crazy, the characters remain completely human.  Even when supernatural events occur, or when aliens come to Earth to abduct someone, humans act human.  This is what makes the satire so biting - supernatural circumstances force out true human nature.  Selfish characters remain selfish, brave characters are still brave, and kind characters are kind. The extreme circumstances draw out the extreme manifestations of character.

I think that New Year's resolutions are, in a weird way, similar to "The Twilight Zone" marathon.  New Year's resolutions are very telling about what a person's motivations and character are.  I make New Year's resolutions every year, and I almost never fully follow through on them.  I enjoy making the goals: they keep me motivated and help me improve different aspects of my life.  That is part of my personality: I'm obsessive about self-improvement, but I try to be realistic about my aspirations.  I always want to be better in every aspect of my life, although I try to cut myself some slack and relax, too.  Even if I don't meet the goal that I set, I still have made progress in some part of my life that I wanted to improve.  At the end of the day, that's a success.

My goal this first trimester of school was to blog every week about my experience as a first year teacher.  There were times when I was excited to blog, and there were other weeks when I had to force myself to write anything down.  Some weeks I got too busy to blog at all, which I knew would probably happen.  I didn't meet my goal, but I only missed it by 3 weeks.  I still think of that as a success.  Even though I didn't meet my arbitrary goal, I still wrote more blogs than I would have without the goal.  The process of writing was cathartic for me, and it allowed me to process some ideas and feelings I was having.  Because the goal caused me to take action, the goal served its purpose.

That is what I love about setting lofty goals for myself: I won't always be successful, but I will at least be striving toward something.  Cyd likes to say that the definition of happiness is setting and achieving goals for yourself.  Whatever your goals are, achieving them makes you feel happy.  The goal can be something as simple as making a pot of coffee.  Your goal is to have a tasty cup of joe for yourself, and you can achieve your goal in only a few minutes.  That feeling of accomplishment is happiness.

I try to find joy in the process as well as in the product, because I know that many goals which I set for myself have no definite end date.  There are some goals that I know I can accomplish, like dunking a basketball.  That's a definite act that I can accomplish and have the feeling of accomplishment.  There are other goals that I have that are less measurable and definite, like being more organized or playing the piano better.  What does it mean to be more organized?  How will I know when I am organized well enough?  What does it mean to be better at piano?  How will I know when I made it?

I took a class in undergrad that was all about utopia, and we discussed how the idea of hope is central to the human experience.  I think that hope, and striving for a better life, is something that is necessary for a happy life.  It's nice to have a ritualized time for goal-setting at New Years, although I know I won't meet all the goals I will set.  I will try to focus instead on the process of striving, and how working toward my goals is more central to happiness than achieving them.  Focusing on the process will make me more likely to achieve the product.

I'll renew my goal to blog once a week, and I'd love your help with meeting that goal.  One unexpected part of this winter break was having people ask me about my blog.  It really inspired me to continue to write.  It is nice to know that other people care about what I write and that I should continue to share my experiences with the world.  So please help to keep me honest, and have a happy new year!