Jill Murray

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. Because I’m always looking for ways to make life better, and my life tends to revolve around major deadlines (editorial deadlines, application deadlines, tax deadlines, and so forth) I usually work myself silly until I reach a deadline, then re-evaluate my entire life and tell myself I’ll never do that to myself again. So I’m always making little changes. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they stick. Sometimes they don’t. I started working on a few things before Christmas, and so far they’re going pretty well.

• Stop reading silly websites that don’t even make me feel good for having read them.
• Stop reading the comments on news sites altogether because they consistently make me feel awful. (I wish I could force this resolution on some of my friends too!)
• Eat out less and cook more.
• Take at least half the energy and creativity I put into baking things like cupcakes, cookies and bagels, and apply it instead to cooking. Try to answer the following questions: I love cooking too, so why doesn’t it feel as escapist as baking? Must all escapist pursuits slowly kill us with our own satisfaction (and sugar and fat)?
• Try to write faster and more sloppily. Worry about quality in the second draft and so on. I think this will prevent many good ideas being slowly suffocated to death by insidious perfectionism.

And last but not least: Continue linking to the story of New Year’s Eve 2007, The Best New Year’s Ever, until such time as some other New Year’s takes its place. (Spoiler-recap: this was the one with the spontaneous 4am bake-sale at Abell Street.)