Barkeep works the whiskey room at a castle in Scotland

The tradition of making resolutions around the dawning of the new year dates back to, well, it doesn’t really matter. The practice is mostly rubbish.

Aside from helping news-starved magazine editors and Today Show correspondents, resolutions are typically as manufactured and meaningful as Boss’s Day Celebrations.

The reasons are simple. If you really need to make a change in your life why wait a few more days until the calendar turns? If you don’t truly want to live differently then you’re not going to just because a Yahoo! news story gave you tips on following through this time.

But that doesn’t mean we should toss aside all self reflection like a half-drunk Champagne flute.

Each New Year I prefer to lay out goals. Some are specific and easily achievable. Others are more vague, or require me to stretch myself a bit. I rarely put a date on any of these other than “In 2011, I will …”

This website and blog are the results of such scheming that took place about this time last year. See, it works! It took me almost all of 2010 to get it up and launched, but hey, here we are.

I haven’t often written these down so I’ll take two big steps now and write my 2011 goals for all to see. Please feel free to hold me accountable to these, my goals for 20!!

  • Write the year as 20!! whenever possible
  • Ride more miles on my bike than last year
  • Play more basketball than last year
  • Hike more miles than last year
  • Write at least one substantial work of something (may include short stories and sketch revues)
  • Take – and edit and post and share – more pictures
  • Volunteer at least two days a month at Lakeview Pantry
  • Take one trip outside the country
  • Get more “improv reps” than last year

I think these are all achievable. I’ve got one big project in there, but room to figure out what that is going to be, exactly. I’m bad about editing my pics, but maybe that can be a habit that finally changes.

What are your goals for this year? Dream big, baby! We want to add so many exclamation points to 20!! it looks like our calendars were hand-drawn by Miley Cyrus.