New Year's Resolutions and More Than Five Things You Don't Know About Me

New Year’s goal setting has been a ritual for more than 30 years for me. First, I buy a lovely new hard bound journal. Then, I think. Then, I brainstorm with a very close friend or two. Next, I put pen to paper. The process consumes much of the month of January, but I look forward to it each year. Voila! My life is planned, to a point.
I thought business goals were usually the easiest for me to do, although I must say that this year they are shaping up as more of a “to-do-list” than the big picture direction that I want. Much more work and thought is needed, to be sure. Yet as I reflect upon 2006, nowhere was the word “blog” anywhere in the book. Life just happened.
So I took out a couple of my old journals for a look-see. My personal history is repeating itself in my business.
1997. One goal I wrote down was to live more in the moment. I remember it well. Every Sunday morning I went horseback riding with a friend. Those were joyous mornings, rain or shine. I would sing and canter along the river. My voice was no prize and neither was my riding. I remember saying “wouldn’t it be great to take singing lessons from someone who rode a horse and was a riding instructor?” January came, goal debating was in progress, and my friend gently suggested that fully living in the moment was something to think about. Of course, that was dead on, so I wrote it in my journal. Whoa, Nellie! Life just happened and has been happening ever since.
I have been amused and enchanted by the “five things you don’t know about me” that have been circulating among my lawyers friends on the net. On the river, drifting in a boat, we call it “twenty questions” and it is the surest way to really get to know people and on an intimate level. I’d really like to play “five things you don’t know about me”, but this is the world wide web, and I guess I just don’t want that many people to really, really know me. You can know that I can’t sing and that I can’t ride a horse well, and that In January 2006 I couldn’t foresee that I would have a blog up by the end of February, but at this venue, I’d rather stick to business! To the friends on the web I have made through my blog: stay in touch, continue to email me, we’ll get together at conferences and by design, and I promise in person you can ask me twenty questions. Or thirty. Maybe I'll tell you what else happened in 1997. Or in 1992. Or...? Just be prepared for reciprocity.