Typically I love the beginning of a new year. It’s so full of possibilities. This is the year I’ll finally [fill in the blank]! So many people scoff at the “lose weight” or “exercise more” resolutions that are made, but you know if that’s what you want to do in the upcoming year, then screw the naysayers. Some people just want to see you fail, no matter what your goal is. So don’t worry about everyone else, just do the best you can for yourself.

In the past, I’ve made some of those same resolutions and I eventually succeeded.  I lost over 50 pounds one year and have kept it off. I ran over 600 miles in 2012 and completed a half-marathon in 2013. But I’ve also said I’d try something new each month, which I’m pretty sure never happened, or to be happier with myself, which will just be an ongoing battle.

This may be the first year I don’t have any kind of resolution or goal for myself. There are things I would  *like* to do or become–I want to be physically stronger, I want to write more, I want to run a smidge more than I did last year, I want to bake gluten-free bread in my oven successfully–but if these things don’t happen then they don’t happen. No harm, no foul. Honestly, right now there are other people’s lives that will impact my own in such a manner that I don’t really want to have any goals. Not any personal ones, anyway.

Instead I have hopes and wishes for others.

I want my mother’s memory and health to stabilize for an entire year. I want my brother’s heart and health to maintain a good state. I want both my son and husband to enjoy moving their bodies.  I want my best friend to find true love.

I want all of us, all of you, to be happy.

But the only thing I really intend on being this year is sane. If I can balance my day to day life–the work and parenting and keeping in shape and caring for Mom and making dinner and doing laundry and taking care of the house and being a wife and a friend–and still find a little time for me to read and write? Then sane I will be. Or rather become. I’m pretty sure I’m not there yet.

So happy new year, my friends. May all your resolutions or goals or intentions come to fruition, and may all of our wishes and hopes and dreams come true.