I don’t make New Years’ resolutions.  Not to sound all broomstick-up-the-back about it, but my Faith pretty much demands that I constantly keep a weather-eye out on myself.  I mean, you know – not in an unhealthily obsessed way.  Just in the watch-your-mouth-and-your-attitude-and-you-better-be-honest-and-selfless sort of way.  So from day to day, in those moments when I go off course – which would be pretty much most of the moments in my life – I’m supposed to immediately feel that, then jerk myself back on track and fly right.

This photograph has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m writing about unless you can see the snow as a metaphor for the dampening character of snow which not only freezes your face off, but makes you wear thick hats so you can hardly hear anything clearly.

So I can’t afford to do life reviews on an annual basis.  It’s more like the way Murphy’s industry handles this kind of thing: in “dailies.” (M’s industry: animated film.  Dailies: when you get together at the end of the day to look at all the footage you shot during the day, rough cut together.  That’s when you can finally tell if it was a disaster or not.  So you know what to fix.  Now.  Before it’s too late and you lose all your investment.)

This is the vehicle that has made seat flopping my primary mode of exercise in the morning.  Early.  In the cold.

Because of that, my resolutions tend to be kind of small: I will not eat chocolate in the next ten minutes.  Or: I will not say bad words the next time Tucker jumps the fence.

Last year, my friend Megan came up with a new tradition: choose ONE word to be your banner slogan for the new year.  It was a cool idea, so I chose one. One word to nail on the nose of my ship.

Then I wrote a blog about my word.  Which was read by one of my dear friends who then picked her own word.  Then inspired a couple of her good friends to pick one for themselves.  I think we became a Movement.

And these stars are just absolutely cool.

Anyway, my last year’s word was “awake.”  Because I didn’t feel like I ever was.  More like I was always half asleep, and things were just happening to me.  But as I thought about it all last year, I realized that this wasn’t really true.

My trouble is not that I’m dozy, but that I get lost in doing one thing, like editing pages for my family photo books or messing around with blogs, until I wake up one day, spitting sand on some beach somewhere, wondering how I got there and realizing that I never did get the checkbook reconciled, or that the summer is suddenly over and I never had one barbecue, or that I still haven’t gotten around to recording my reading of The Only Alien, which I really sort of needed to do before the book is totally dead.

Making things happen.  I haven’t been making things happen.  I’ve just been drifting with the current.

This is an alligator.  Or dragon.  Not an alligator. Smothered with all the stuff the world has dumped on him.

So I tried on five or six new words for this year.  Like “deliberate.”  Or “aware.”  But nothing felt right. Till today.  When light finally hit my brain.

So I will share it with you:

the word for 2011 is:

Swim

Not float.

Not drift.

Not skim along.

But – swim.

Think it’ll work?  Yeah?  Well – don’t hold your breath.

(snicker)

HOME!!  Yipee!!