Do what I love
- Publish my book
- Visit at least three countries
- Do at least one kick-ass pro-bono project
- Take notes
- Re-read my favorite books
- Play the piano
- Land at least two new and ongoing agency clients so that my business can continue to grow and support me

Feel & look good
- Eat whole foods
- Take the time to dress well
- Learn to round brush my hair
- Take long walks

Live a flexible, mobile life
- (See above goal about building business to support lifestyle)
- Fit everything I own into my car; sell the rest
- Go without a plan sometimes
- Rent month to month or try housesitting

Love others
- Help others succeed in business, risk-taking, etc.
- Be generous with my love, my time, my compassion and my laughter
- Make people laugh
- Really listen
- Be honest

Take risks & try new things
- Be humble, vulnerable and wholehearted in all my relationships
- Go paragliding
- Learn to make pasta from scratch
- Learn to make pizza from scratch

In preparation for said party, I was going back through all my old goal lists: the ones from college, which were philosophical (and vague) in nature (”really love,” “cultivate a heart for the peoples of the world”); the ones from the past couple years, which were more concrete (”see Luna pass her therapy test,” “learn as much as I can about body language”).

And then there was one list of goals that I had forgotten about. One list of goals that stood up and made me stop skimming. It was from summertime 2010, when I was reading The Happiness Project. I had taken the author’s lead and made lists of things I did that I thought I should and yet didn’t make me happy, and of things that really, truly made me happy. Little things. Big things. Everyday things.

To my surprise and delight, looking back over this exercise, I realized that I’d formed these into goals in my mind and made some major changes in the past year and a half. For example, I said I didn’t like having overnight guests…and so I stopped having them. I said I didn’t like feeling always compelled to finish the books I start; and, so, I stopped finishing books I didn’t like. I said I didn’t like relying on caffeine, drinking so much of it to get through the day. And, so, I’ve cut soda and coffee almost completely out of my life, now turning to a cup of Chai in the mornings.

On the other side of that coin, I said that I loved reading children’s books and memoirs. And I started reading more of them. I said I loved live acoustic music–so I sought it out. I said I loved putting time and effort into my outfits in the morning. And on came the wardrobe re-mix of 2011, where I now love everything in my closet.

There are some things from that list that no longer apply (I now like to go shopping, whereas before it was a chore. Trying new wines has become less exciting. And I’ve struck a balance between leaving Luna and taking her), but there are still a few things that I haven’t done anything about. They still make me happy or unhappy and I talk about them A LOT. But have I done anything to really change them? Not yet.

This year, I think you’ll see that change.

The first item on the dislike list is the only one that I’ve done nothing about from that list. According to it, I dislike “being outside in winter.” But let’s adjust that. Here’s what I don’t like: WINTER. Cold, snow, ice, needing to bundle and bundle and bundle and spend a hundred bazillion dollars on electricity to heat old houses, all while still bundling more.

Winter messes with my other goals. My goals about dressing well (which I trade in for dressing in hundreds of layers). My goals about being outside in the sunshine (too cold). My goals about eating well (stuck in the house, not exercising and bored…what do I do?).

And, yet, I have done nothing about this.

Now, I’m not beating myself up. There’s not much I could have done. I’ve been building a career and then a business, staying put to take things to the next level. But now I have a certain flexibility. So it’s time to change the fact that half of my year is spent wishing that it were the other half of the year. One of the main goals for this year, thus, will be to winter someplace warm (meaning the winter that starts at the end of 2012. This one, already underway, will see some attempts to travel to warm places, but next winter…I’m outta here, folks).

So…this year: this year I’m going to get back to the things I love. Flexibility. Wellness. Love. Risk-taking. And I’m going to remedy the few things that are still on those lists and yet haven’t been addressed.

I think you’ll see some interesting shifts.

“It strikes me…speaking as a thoroughly white guy, how messed up our approach is. Because when we talk about hell, it’s generally not to unsettle ourselves. It’s generally the opposite—to reassure ourselves, so we think, Aren’t we glad we’re insiders with God and going to heaven? Isn’t it a shame those other people are so bad and wrong and going to hell? It’s part of the system of them-us thinking.”

- The Last Word and the Word After That

1. Support myself wholly through my business.
Since April this year!

2. Do one+ free project(s) for a non-profit or other do-gooder organization through Content for Do-Gooders.
Have begun work on four of them, a total of 52 hours of free work given out for the holidays.

3. See Luna pass her therapy test with flying colors.
Since we decided not to do the Prescription Pet Program, I’ve put off the testing. At this juncture, as I am restless, I am waiting to see where the Luna-bug and I land before we do any program selection or testing.

4. Get into the Prescription Pet Program at the Children’s Hospital.
See #3.

5. See my book picked up by a publisher.
Mid/late this year, I realized that my goal–to put my book, my ideas, my experiences, out there for the world to experience alongside me, wasn’t something that required an agent or a publisher. Now I’m working on getting it edited, having a cover designed and self-publishing. Hopefully early next year. Stay tuned.

6. Publish a story in the New Yorker.
Not yet. Probably in part due to my lack of trying.

7. Go swing dancing at least once per week.
Oh, how I failed miserably at this one. I went all winter and now I’m back this winter. Summers, apparently, find me doing other activities, which I am quite fine with.

8. When possible, choose to bike or take public transit.
Another fail, due to lack of finding a bike suitable for midget self.

9. Take better care of my health.
I think yes. Healthier food. Lots of exercise. Feeling good, people.

10. Live a low stress existence.
Not exactly low stress, but I no longer have full-time jobs that require me to work till 10 p.m., so we’ll call this one a win. I do still need to figure out how to balance myself out in the world of self-employment: where one week is empty and the next week is slammed.

11. Be wholehearted.
I think so. I feel so much more like myself again, after a couple years of feeling off.

12. Take care of people.
I think this will always be something I want to get better at. But we can still call it a success for this year.

13. Spend time outdoors.
Yes! Even during the winter. Mostly because I spent some of my winter time in warmer climates, like San Diego’s. I win!

14. Make people laugh
Win!

15. Learn as much as I can about non-verbal communication.
A number of books, much information forgotten, some retained.

Take a pause here and consider this. The GOVERNMENT is giving MOOLAH to companies so that they will promote a SPECIFIC RELIGIOUS IDEA. And not even that…to promote Christmas, which, quite frankly, is hardly a religious idea anymore, as it has been hijacked by a fat, jolly guy, a reindeer with a cold and millions and millions of presents (e.g. how far will this language change even get you, religious folks?).

Anyway: the government…offering money…to promote a language shift?

Is this true? Can anyone confirm for or against this?

Because…really? Isn’t it the point of our country that government and church are two separate things?

Maybe some of you are thinking that if our government subscribed to a religion (in particular, Christianity), it would be a good thing. But think it through. Governments through the ages have taken on religions, and what happens to them? The religion is forced to serve the interests of that government…not the other way around. Think about the Crusades, people. That’s not something the Jesus I’ve read about would be excited to attach his name to. But greedy men wanted to take over the world…and what better way to pacify the uneducated masses than to say that God wanted this? Ditto what all the explorers did to the natives across the Americas.

In fact, the reason our forefathers separated church and state is because they had experience, they understood that it is the state, not the religion, that gets its way when the two are intertwined. And that leads to the kinds of things they were running from–persecution, stunted ideas (Galileo must be evil!), even death.

As Don Miller says, anyone who wants their way claims the support of Jesus. Our government already does too much of this. I mean, George Bush, Bill Clinton…everybody claims Christianity. Yet these leaders behave vastly differently. And Christianity, like it or not, is a religion of behavior. When Jesus talks about the end of life, he says he will separate the good and bad–not according to who prayed a “sinners prayer,” but according to who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, healed the sick.

Also, since when did paying people off make them believe something different about the world? Has anyone ever walked down the street planning nefarious deeds and stopped in his tracks when he saw a Merry Christmas sign…falling to his knees and begging for forgiveness right then and there? Unlikely.

Instead, paying people to promote a certain ideology, a certain meaning, a certain holiday, does something that Jesus–the “reason for the season” according to all of the rhyming, cliched cards I’ve gotten so far–never did. In fact, when Jesus saw people using the temple as a place to buy and sell and cheat and exchange money, he flipped over the sellers’ damn tables. It’s the one time I remember from the Bible where Jesus really freaks out. John even says that Jesus made a whip and drove them out (something, by the way, that I would have liked to see). He was incensed that they had turned a place that was supposed to be about God, about worship, about love, about goodness, into a “house of merchandise.”

His message was leave it all behind. Sell all you have and give to the poor. Take care of each other.

The point is this, people: people should use whatever language they want. They shouldn’t be be forced to be politically correct just like they shouldn’t be forced or incentivized to promote one religion. And if you are a Christian and you want to see the world change, pour your energy into changing circumstances and hearts–not language. A billboard is less effective than a hot meal. A listening ear gets you farther than a bunch of jargon.

“I mean that to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can’t accept who God is: a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people”…”that is why God tells us so many times to love each other.”

“They loved me like a good novel. Like an art film, and this is how I felt when I was with them, like a person John Irving would write. I did not feel fat or stupid or sloppily dressed. I did not feel like I did not know the Bible well enough, and I was never conscious what my hands were doing or whether or not I sounded immature when I talked. I had always been so conscious of those things, but living with the hippies I forgot about myself. And when I lost this self-consciousness I gained so much more. I gained an interest in people outside my own skin.”

“The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands.”

-Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller

- Brian McLaren, The Last Word and the Word After That