First New Year's Resolution

I'm usually awash with resolutions and yet it has been hard to think of any this year. Maybe it is because so much has changed. This time last year I think my main resolutions were to finish my PhD and lose weight - two things that I tended to struggle with. I managed to complete them both =) Weyhey...

Oh maybe that is it, maybe I've lost the things that I used to define myself. I was the guy doing a PhD, I was the guy without a job, I was the guy thinking about moving to Australia. And now, I'm no longer defined by those things. Am I a Joe Everybody now? Maybe I no longer feel unique. Maybe I need to. Maybe I need to stop waiting for things to "settle down" before I step out.

D'oh, my mind wandered a bit there. Or maybe it just needed written down to be real. Heh. I think this has went a little off topic. Onto my first New Year Resolution. I'm on the verge of a major change in life. In two months time, we may be living in our new home in Australia. Thats a short amount of time and yet far enough away for the thought to be pushed to the back of my mind.

My first resolution is to make as much of that time count, to fill it with as many memories as I can, to find myself changed by something or someone so I'm different then than I am now.

I have a cheesy thought in my head when I write that. Imagine time passing being like a bucket of sand being poured out. We can stick our hand rigidly into the falling sand and tell ourselves we are in the moment, we are involved. And yet, the sand doesn't care we are there, it is largely unmoved. It finds a new way to reach the ground and once it is all gone, our hand has little trace of all the grains that passed. The only way we can retain the passing sand is to change shape, to cup our hand to that we can catch the sand. That way, when the bucket is empty, we can show we were there.

We have sand in our hand. We own sand. I want to own memories. I need to change shape.