Every year it seems I go back and forth on New Years resolutions. Do I like them? Do I not like them? Will I make any? Will I ever get them done? Where am I? Is this a Christmas coma? Happy New Year? What year is it? Who am I? That sort of thing.

Every December 31^st, starting around age 7, I would make some grand resolution proclamations. At that time, I resolved to finally get a monkey and to do a handstand. They were noble goals to be certain. As I’ve gotten older, the resolutions have become more about fixing my shitty adult life. Yes, I still want that monkey but I also would like my savings account to get into the triple digits.

While the resolutions have changed over the years, their execution has not. Every year I would either speak or write these resolutions into existence. They’d go into a little notebook or I’d tell my family around the dinner table. I’d resolve to write a book within the year or start a blog (different than this one) or travel Europe for 3 months. Every year my New Years excitement matched my Christmas excitement because I was on the verge of accomplishing all the things I ever wanted to accomplish in my whole entire life amen.

Can you guess how many resolutions I’ve actually checked off my list since age 7? Probably close to zero. I would stop blogging after a few days or get writers block after a few pages or never make those European plans. I wouldn’t achieve my resolutions almost 100% of the time. It started to feel like if you wanted something to not happen, then you should have me resolve to do it. By the second week of January I felt rather pathetic or, at the minimum, have moved on.

I think there are a number of reasons why resolutions don’t work for me. The practical reason is that I never made a plan for actually meeting those goals. I wanted to write a book and get a smoking hot body and travel the world. Those things require some study and planning and strategizing and action. I didn’t have those elements; I just had a final destination in mind. And there it remained permanently, an elusive dream.

The main reason resolutions don’t feel right any more, aside from the obvious fact that I never complete them, is that they arise out of some deeper belief that I am broken or wrong. While they appear shiny and ambitious on the outside, their genesis is something a little darker and more destructive. Maybe I wanted a ripped body because I was doing NOTHING for my health at the time. Maybe I wanted to start giant creative projects because I wasn’t being creative AT ALL. Maybe I wanted to write a book because I hadn’t been doing A STITCH of writing. I was failing at making my life look a certain way. I was failing my art. I was failing my body. I was failing myself. Or, at least, that’s the false place where these resolutions originated.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about living a happy and healthy life. If a New Years resolution is what you need to jumpstart something you’ve always wanted, then get on it. Some people just need a little push and they can maintain something in the long run. Maybe, too, your resolutions are smaller than mine were. Maybe they are manageable things that you would have gotten to eventually. I say “if it works for you, then keep on keeping on.” (seriously I just said that out loud) However, the research I’ve recently conducted in the form of a single Google search where I didn’t even click the links, leads me to believe that most of us don’t achieve our resolutions. On the whole, we all make grandiose plans that usually fall short within a few days or weeks. We think New Year, New Me when in reality it’s closer to New Calendar, Same Fuckery.

That’s why this year I’m going with something a little different. Instead of a resolution, I’m adopting a mantra. It’s an idea or phrase that I can return to again and again as I go about my daily life. Mantras are much gentler than resolutions. Even the word itself just kind of rolls off your tongue and onto your yoga mat, mantra. On the other hand, resolution sounds like it should be on a PowerPoint presentation at a quarterly stockholders meeting. “Mantra” is persistently suggestive while “resolution” screams in your ear to drop and give it 20.

My mantra this year is “maintenance and consistency.” These are two things I struggle with the most when setting out to achieve something. I’m great at thinking of big ideas. I can even break those down into actionable steps (sometimes). I even have short bursts of energy to work on those actionable steps. Everything comes to a screeching halt after that though. I lose steam and don’t continue.

Maintenance and consistency are two critical pieces I’ve been missing in my creative life, until now. This blog has taught me a lot, as silly as that might be. One of the things I’ve learned is that doing something consistently adequate is better than doing something stupendous never. Is every single sentence I write perfect? Not by a long shot. But am I producing something week after week with (some) regularity? Yes actually. To me, that’s the stronger choice. That’s how books get written, savings accounts grow, bodies transform, and goals met. Small things done repeatedly over a long time. That’s how things change.

Will this whole mantra thing actually work? Not sure. But it sure beats trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I can tell you that in the first few days of January, I’ve felt a different kind of hope and excitement than in years past. It’s from the knowledge that what I’m going to accomplish can and will take some time but it is achievable. My fitness goals, my money goals, my writing goals. They will all happen if I put forth a consistent effort and maintain it for however long it takes.

That being said, has as anyone seen my monkey?