Hear that low-pitched hum accompanied by the high whining shriek of locked-up mental gears?  It's the sound of the (self-imposed) pressure on People of the Blog everywhere to make their last/first post of the old/new year pithy/somber/witty/reflective.  The older I get, the less interest I have in parading my failures for the whole world to see, especially if I can'y squeeze any comedic value out of them.

So instead of resolutions, I'm going public with some guidelines for 2010 ... some personal milestones that, for one reason or another, I've decided are important to me.  Take 'em or leave 'em.  I pay the registration and hosting fees on this bitch and I can do as I choose.

1) Get started on my Music City 1/2 Marathon training and keep it going post-race.  When I finished last year, the multi-month endorphin rush made me talk crazy talk ... wanted to run it next year, wanted to run 5Ks for kicks.  If you were one of the people I said this to, my apologies.  I was out of my head.  My goal is to finish, maybe with an even better time.

2) Keep an accurate list of the books I read.  I don't know why this is such a big deal for me.  But I want to do a better job of tracking how much of the written word I take in.

3) Learn how to use a flash, and start taking pictures of people.  Don't get me wrong.  I love shooting 300 frames of a pile of rusty metal as much as the next OCD fauxtographer out there.  But a recent visit to the Memphis Books Museum of Art and viewing a collection of WPA photos (disappointingly fewer than I would have liked to have seen) suggested that what my oeuvre has in obsessive detail it lacks in soul.  @griffintech photographer @bradleyspitzer publically set out last year (or the year before that) to "learn how" to shoot people.  I think he's more than succeeded.  It's time for me to nut up and ask people if I can take their picture.

4) Be a better friend.  Facebook friends are fine, but few of them would actually pick you up at the airport late at night on a rainy Sunday.  I want to give more time to the people who really matter.  And spend way less mental and emotional energy on those who don't.

5) Write a story, submit it somewhere for publication and get my first real rejection letter out of the way.  To celebrate my 20th college reunion, why not actually write some fiction and send it off somewhere to have it looked at and summarily rejected.  "I haven't written in way too long.  I need to get back into that."  Or "Well, the New Yorker rejected a story about middle-class white suburban angst I sent them.  Said something like "did not fit their needs at this time."  Which sounds better?  

6) Let my kids grow up.  They're going to whether I want them to or not.