I love New Years Eve. It is truly the most wonderful night of the year. Why? Because it’s the chance to put to rest the year that’s been and joyfully predict that the next year is going to be absolutely awesome. I love that we can all say that, and mean it.

The pages of 2013 are currently smudge free, and like roughly two-thirds of the population I’m already planning what I will write in the Book of Mike. Every year I swear I’m never doing resolutions again. Mostly because they usually last only as long as the time it takes to come up with them, and also because year in and year out those resolutions have remained the same.

My resolutions for 2013 are somewhat different then those I’ve made since time began. I’m not resolving to lose weight, find a partner or pay off my credit card. Those three particular resolutions take too much focus. I’ll lose weight if I make the decision to eat healthier food. I’ll find a partner if I decide on having a work/life balance and not spend all my time working, or worrying about work. I’ll pay off my credit card if I stop making charges on that shiny piece of platinum coloured plastic, and simply make payments.

Each of those resolutions are passive and require only good decisions on my part. Given that since I’ve quit drinking I make much better decisions then I was making when my brain was clouded with alcohol fumes and preservatives I’m already on track with most of those anyway.

Weight wise I’ve lost about 15 kilos in 2012 through making better food choices. Partner wise I don’t do anything to find one, and unless Prince Charming in his rusty jalopy is going to turn up at the front door it’s really not going to happen until I make changes in my life. The credit card is the biggest surprise I’ve had since stopping drinking.

I’ve gone from three grand over my credit card limit to 1500 under the limit in barely 4.5 months. Given the drinking usually occurred at home, that shows just how much money was being spent shopping online in the dead of night when I was stuck head first in a bottle of wine.

No I think instead of worrying about the “pounds” so to speak,  2013 is going to be spent looking after the pennies. What’s the old saying “look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.”

2013 is going to be a year of beginnings, middles and ends. That is the resolution I’ve set for myself. The only one.

My resolution for 2013 is to finish what I start. It doesn’t sound like much but if I can pull that off my life will change in ways even I can’t imagine.

My computer, the drawers in my desk, the notepads on the table, they all document a life unfinished. Not finished in a “well I’ve lived to be 98 time to pop my clogs” kind of way. But a life of half-baked, and unfinished projects, stories, scripts, articles. All sorts of things I’ve started, gotten to about the half way point and then walked away from.

It’s the one thing about my life I truly want to change in the new year. To finish what I start. Regardless of what it is; a self-improvement programme, a screenplay, a novel, cleaning my room, the laundry. Whatever it is, my only real goal for this new year is to complete each task in full.

Previous posts in here talk about my skill at procrastination, my ideals and dreams, but there’s only one or two that talk about finishing projects. Outside of my “real life” at work, the only thing I’ve finished this year is a short film script called Young at Heart. My second short film, Butterfly is yet to be finished.

I wrote it, drafted it, even made an edit or two and then I stopped. It’s sitting on my desk waiting for me to do something with it. It could easily sit there until this time next year if I don’t make the commitment to myself to finish that which I start.

It takes more than talk to be more than you currently are in this life. For me, I like to talk. I talk a lot. I talk in words and I talk in my writing and I talk and talk and talk.

When my life changed several years ago, it wasn’t talk, it was talk and action. That was the combination that saw me hired for my first job as a conference producer. It was the combination that saw me hired for my first senior management role. It was the combination I employ on a daily basis that saw my events fall just short of a million dollars in revenue generated in the first year of a start up company I worked for.

Without action none of it will be anything other than talk. Part of the resolution for 2013 is to become a creature of action. To firmly and with purpose decide on what I want to do, and to take the steps I need to take to do that.

I read a blog post last night that talked in part about committing only to the next step. I can’t remember the exact analogy the blogger used, but I really liked it and resonated with me. Basically it boiled down to going to the gym, and the points were;

• Commit first to getting out of bed when the alarm goes off
• Call a taxi to pick you up, then you’re committed to leaving the house
• Commit to taking the cab to the gym

By doing it in that manner you’re not necessarily committing to the exercise until you’re at the gym and making the commitment to do whatever exercise you are there to do.

For someone like me, who see’s the big picture and gets lost in the “how the hell is that going to happen” before I’ve even written “Fade In” I think it will be helpful.

I guess the point to this post is that setting goals or making resolutions is all well and good, but if you’re making the same resolutions every New Years Eve and by January 2nd you’re already back in the rut of your safety zone you need to seriously consider making new choices. New resolutions.

My only goal for 2013 is to live well, and to complete the projects I begin. My hope for whoever reads this blog is that you will have a wonderful, happy and energy filled 2013 and that you find the path to the success your dreams are looking for.