One of the things I never liked about our society is the whole concept of New Year’s Resolutions. Just one? Only to fizzle out two weeks into January? That’s nothing. I’ve had my own system for goals along the line of “New Year, New Me” stuff starting last year, and it kept me going well into December.

I told myself to start having more fun with things and find ways to keep surprising myself, which both amused me and encouraged me. It may sound cheesy, but if you want to stick to a goal during the year that’s so simple that anything can fall into it, just find ways to surprise yourself. Below are just some things I did in 2018. Feel free to laugh at them; I did say some of the things that kept me going were cheesy.

1. Took a train to Rhode Island without getting lost.

2. Went to the MFA by myself.

3. Got an A on a paper in a challenging class.

4. Finished a 15-page paper in a day and a half.

5. Started paying off my student loans rather than waiting for graduation to trigger it and pay more for doing so.

And that’s just five things I did right there. Okay, so most of them are academic, and the rest of them are a little on the cheesy side, but I stuck to a goal I had since New Year’s. That was pretty much the test more than actually surprising myself, really. Have a goal for the New Year like everyone else, but, unlike everyone else, maybe keep to it for at least one Christmas, which I have. 

And if you really need specific goals other than something as vague and open-ended as that, just keep making and breaking goals during the year that you complete. I never liked the New Year’s Resolution thing, as everybody fails halfway into January, but a vague and straightforward goal as open-ended as the above at least kept making me feel better about myself during the year in even just little ways.