New Day's Resolutions

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Resolutions for two reasons. First, all those bright and enthusiastic promises you make to yourself inevitably lead to disappointment. A few weeks (or months, if you're lucky), you slip back into your old ways, leaving your resolutions to rot in the ditch as you move on with your life. What once seemed like great ideas now seem horribly impossible, and you end up stuck in the old "I really thought I was going to stick to it this time" funk. Just visit your local YMCA once in January and again in April, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

The other reason I don't like New Year's Resolutions is that they provide a marvelous excuse to continue bad habits until January 1 rolls around again. Once your resolutions have suffered untimely deaths from the afore-mentioned fate, you now have numerous weeks and months to relax before you're allowed to try again. Making an annual attempt to change your habits is an unsurprisingly ineffective way to alter your daily routine. Daily life is just that - daily life, not yearly life. So today, I have some New Day resolutions to share with you.

• Check my phone less. I don't even have a smart phone, so no internet/facebook/twitter/angrybirds/templerun/wordswithfriends/yougettheidea. But I still pull it out constantly to check the time, or see if I have any texts that I missed. I should just get a watch. Last night, the vibrate mode stopped working properly... maybe that's a blessing in disguise.
• Spend intentional time with God every day. Whether it be diving deep into a Scripture passage, journaling a prayer, or sitting outside reflecting on the beauty of creation, I want to intentionally grow in my knowledge of God and his character. I say that He is the most important thing in my life, but do I act like it?
• Be on time. I'm late to things so often that late has become the new on time, because everyone expects me to be late. I can usually make it to "important" things on time - for example, I'm rarely late for class. But I always show up late for dinner with friends, etc. Bad habits spread... I want to be more responsible with my time. Plus, I don't want people to always have to wait for me.
• Stop procrastinating. For a while, I worked ahead in all of my classes, and it was wonderful. I completed assignments when I got them and avoided all sorts of stress. It was wonderful. Now that I have less work to do, it's really tempting to put it off. But again, I want to be responsible... and procrastination is a hard habit hard to break.
• Keep track of my spending. Having a debit card is great and terrible at the same time, because I don't have to carry much cash and rarely suffer from arm soreness caused by five extra pounds of dimes and pennies lost at the bottom of my purse... but since I always have money in my account, I don't keep track of how much I spend on what. It hasn't hurt me yet, but in the rapidly-approaching adult world, a lack of budgeting skills will cause a whole mess of problems.
• Read the news. With all the activities and responsibilities cramming into all the space in my life bubble, I don't read articles about what is going on outside my bubble as often as I should. I want to be in an informed citizen, and with all the available information out there, the responsibility to become one falls on my shoulders.

Why did I choose today to make these resolutions? I can't afford to make excuses any more, nor do I desire to make them. I'm quickly realizing that I'm an adult now. A few nights ago, my boyfriend and several other friends joyfully claimed their caps and gowns, their ticket into the real world time-stamped for 23 days from now. I'll be graduating from college in next year, and frankly, there's a lot that has to happen in those 389 days. I have no idea where I will go or what I will do once I walk across the stage in my own cap and gown. But I know that before that happens, some of my habits need to die hard and others need to become much more, well, habitual. And now that I've posted them on the internet, I have to stick to them because they'll never go away. So pray for me on my endeavors, friends. After all, you never know how much time you really have left.

"Never put off until tomorrow (or January 1) what you can do today."

- Thomas Jefferson