You know how it goes...every year that New Years Eve rolls around and everybody is deciding where they will go to ring in the New Year, who they are going to kiss at the strike of midnight, and of course...what their resolution for the upcoming year will be. And everybody sticks to their New Year's resolution....right? Wrong.

This year and for all my years to come, I refuse to make another New Years Resolution.

I can honesty say I do not know one person who has stuck to their New Year's resolution for more than about 2 months at the very most. You hear the constant list of things people swear they are going to change this year like to get better grades, eat healthier, and the most popular..lose some weight. Now don't get me wrong those are all great resolutions and I am without a doubt guilty of making all of those resolutions at some point in time, but c'mon let's get real. I can honestly say I never actually did any of them. My great ideas stick around for a couple weeks and then fizzle out pretty abruptly.

Things like losing weight, exercising more, and just being a happier person all around are all great things that everyone should accomplish if they should choose to, but why are you stressing yourself more when you can be living your life. If your goal is to lose 10lbs, but then that hot guy from science class asks you on a date to a baseball game and is ready to share some ballpark hotdogs with you I highly doubt your gonna look him in the eye and say a salad would make you happier instead. I'm certainly not saying that there aren't a bunch of things that I could change in my life, but I've spent so many years trying change every aspect to make me happier when what I was missing out on was just living in general.

If there is something you want to do... then you can just do it OR slowly get there after a year or two OR forget about it all together! Whichever you choose works perfectly fine. Please don't worry about what other people think about the length of your race to success. You want to learn how to play the guitar? Awesome, you play that guitar and if it takes you 25 years to finally be able to say that you did it because you strayed away from the thought of learning the strings then so be it. If in January you swore you would hike the Appalachian Trail and by March after months of miles of hikes training yourself you realized you don't really like the smell of the outdoors anymore and decide to not follow through with it then good for you.

In my opinion, New Years resolutions do a little more damage than good. No one should feel bad if they weren't able to complete something that they originally thought they wanted. No one should feel bad if they don't want to change anything at all about themselves or their life. People spend so much time wishing they were something they aren't and have something that they don't. Learning to be truly happy with what you have in your life now as is will be the best thing you can do for yourself in the end.

Life is filled with so much happiness, but also sadness and anger and every other emotion in between. If there wasn't any bad then how would we ever appreciate all the greatness there is? This year I'm going to roll with all the punches and expect to be knocked down by a few along the way. So what if I suffer a couple black eyes...I'm sure I'll swing out a few knockouts along the way. And that is good enough for me because I'm still breathing which means I'm still making mistakes and great decisions and horrible ones with that, but hey in the end it's all an exciting adventure and I'll take all that comes with it.

Cheers to that and a Happy New Year to all