New Year's Resolutions

I spent the last evening of 2008 with a friend in Japan, her husband, and another married couple who are friends of theirs. After celebrating the New Year Japanese style (see "Oops..."), we ate soba at the couple's house and decided to share our New Year's resolutions. For the past couple years, I haven't made a single new year's resolution. Actually, I think the last resolution I made was not to make another new year's resolution - and I think that was in middle school. But this time I was put on the spot so I just said that my resolution was to get a job for this year. (Although now it's looking like I should make it more a priority.) Later, I started thinking more about proper resolutions. (I have to have something to tell people when they ask, right?)

• Think more about what is happening now, at the moment.

I have a tendency to look back on the past and in hindsight, appreciate what I had. I wouldn't be the person I am without the experiences I've had, and I'm glad I can appreciate that now. But I don't want to look back in a couple years and think about what a great experience this was when I should be enjoying it now.

At the same time, we've all been asked since we were young, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I'm still trying to decide what I want to be when I "grow up," but I want to live my life while it's happening instead of constantly trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of it. During senior year at Lehigh, one of my professors asked me what I wanted to do. I said I was thinking about becoming a lawyer which would mean working at a law firm to decide if I really wanted to go into law, taking the LSAT, then going to law school... But then my professor said, "That's great, but what I mean is, what do you want to do now [like in the next year or two]?" I thought about it, because it's a question that no one ever asks me, and I said, "I want to travel." And my professor asked, "Then why don't you do that?"