TWKM Blog

I hate New Year’s resolutions. I think that they are a band-aid, quick-fix, fly-by-night way of improving your life. At least it’s a band-aid approach to feeling better, that you are making some sort of effort to improve your life.

Something about the fact that everyone everywhere is creating new resolutions that they are feigning commitment to cheapens the whole underlying idea of self-improvement that New Year’s resolutions represent. If you really wanted to improve on something you would decide to do it on March 23rd or August 5th, not just because everyone else is doing it. Not just because that is the socially agreed-upon time to make some change (or state that you want to make some change).

With all that being said, I have some New Year’s resolutions but they have come about only coincidentally along with the new year. I recently bought and started reading “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. It’s a great read and it has some information and ideas that are truly ground-breaking for me, especially the idea that our lives should be lived based on principles rather than based on people’s expectations or our personal goals.

Our goals should be a reflection of our principles and ultimately this is the only way that we can find satisfaction in achieving our goals. The importance is placed on identifying and committing to sound principles and one of the ways to do this is to create a “Personal Mission Statement”, “Personal Creed”, “Personal Manifesto”, etc. Tonight I began mine and I would like to share it with you.

This is my manifesto. I like “manifesto” because it sounds aggressive and underground and important. Where this manifesto differs from New Year’s resolutions is that these values or actions can always be improved or can continue all my life. It’s a work in progress and you can consider these as my New Year’s resolutions if you so choose:

• Get to know and love my God better.
• Consider people’s feelings.
• Consider my impact on the lives of others.
• Build deep relationships.
• Speak honestly, with sensitivity.
• Communicate early and often.
• Ask questions.
• Seek solutions.
• Do everything I can with what I have.
• Listen twice as much as I speak.
• Wake up before I NEED to, leave before I NEED to, arrive before I NEED to. Basically do things before I NEED to.
• Consider tomorrow today and next year this week.
• Make and keep commitments.
• Be available to others.
• Be supportive of others.
• Improve myself every year.
• Learn something new every day.
• Do something outside my comfort zone as often as possible.
• Express my creativity.
• Live transparently.

How about you? How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do you make them? Do you keep them?

About a year ago I read about To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) in the Prodigal Son Magazine. I checked out their site and the story really moved me. I think we all have known, know or have been someone who has gone through serious depression. When I read the story, I thought of my sister and how important it was to me that she knows how much I love her.

Ever since then it has been something in the back of my mind that I would love to support. I plan on supporting their work by buying some of their merch. They have stylish shirts and hoodies that stand out and make a statement.

You can support them too. Join me and nearly half a million other people for the 2nd annual TWLOHA Day today by writing “Love” on your arms. This is not an official TWLOHA event, but you can never go wrong by spreading the message of love.

Check out the Flickr Group, Facebook event and the official To Write Love on Her Arms website. Here’s some art that I did for the event:

I want to give a big thanks to the people at Bible Gateway for their recent blog post about the Google Gadget I put together to search their site.

Bible Gateway is a great site where you can search the Bible for verses or topics. I use it every morning to do my daily reading and the search functions are top notch. I created the Google Gadget to use from my iGoogle page where my reading schedule is on my Google Calendar. If you use iGoogle you can add the gadget by visiting the information page and clicking the Add to Google button.

If you have suggestions or questions about the gadget check out the information page and get in touch.

In about a month I will be moving out into the unknown, into my first condo. There are a whole lot of things that will change at this time, but the scariest of all of them is that I will have to cook for myself — and survive what I cook for myself.

Luckily, Dave Navarro (@davenavarro) of Rock Your Day just posted a tweet about Sushi Day, a blog that posts sushi recipes.

This week’s featured recipe over at Sushi Day is the Crazy California Roll. Looks like fun to make, and I love sushi! Let’s just hope I have better luck than Allison (@sushiday) when I set to make myself some Crazy California rolls. :D

Does anyone know of some good blogs/sites where there are easy, classy recipes for a young bachelor such as myself to take a stab at? (The pun is absolutely intended!)