I have devised a new challenge for myself that I’ll be rolling out here on my blog, called my3*6*5…

I know there are variations of this out there, including Project 365, which I believe in so very strongly…But I had to create something that suited my needs and still provided a solid challenge that will keep me motivated to keep my two loves, writing and photography, a high priority in my life.

I will also be rolling out a variation of this with my advanced composition students that I will be teaching next year. Our goal is to get them started as early as June 1, which will coincide nicely with their graduation in about a year. More on their variation soon.

Here’s what I’m doing. Tell me what you think.

Every week, I need to complete a minimum of my3*6*5, which includes the following:

• 3–contacts to unique people previously not contacted during the my3*6*5 challenge
• 6–photos that capture my life
• 5–journal entries that chronicle my story.

By the end of these 365 days, I will have completed the following:

• 156–number of unique contacts
• 312–unique photos capturing my life on a daily basis
• 260–unique journal entries

This may sound a bit idealistic, which is why I made this a weekly thing and not a daily trip….I figure that, when the photos are laggin’, the pen will be mightier, and vice versa.

I will record everything here, beginning June 1.

So….what do all of you think? Care to join me?

I welcome January with a busy pen, scribbling in various daybooks, laptops, napkins, notecards, and Moleskine notebooks. Whatever I can get my hands on, really. My writing has been furious, immediate, thoughtful, raw, superficial, deep. I’ve scribbled lousy lines of verse and brilliant slices of life without self-condemnation or overzealous praise. I am, in every sense of the profession, living as the writer I’ve always imagined possible.

I do this in tandem with a revitalized yogic practice that explores my own spirituality as much as I might practice pranayama (breathing) and asanas (postures). I am shedding this tired, old, obese body for a lighter, spirited, peaceful soul, one that emanates kindness and love more clearly, more effectively, to all whom I might meet. Friend, stranger, self.

For weeks, I’ve thought deeply about my goals for 2008. I toyed around with the notion of having no goals, no expectations; I’ve also contemplated rehashing the same goals I set every year (lose 75 pounds, publish whatever book I’m working on, etc.). But during these past few weeks, I have realized that such goals never really work for me because they are so impossibly unfulfilling. If I set a goal to lose 75 pounds, I cannot be successful until I reach that magical number. And for what reason? What do I gain by reaching Destination B? I succeeded once in playing this type of game, setting this kind of goal. And the moment that I reached it–the very moment I claimed victory–I celebrated by eating many foods I had managed to stay away from for many months. Before I knew it, all of the weight I had lost (plus 20 pounds) had returned.

The same is true for my writing. My goals are too lofty, too dreamy. They are too far in the distance and falling short of publication makes all of my efforts a dismal failure.

This game that I have been playing, whether I like it or not, has been nothing more than a pretty good defense mechanism for just putting my head down and getting some work done, day in and day out. All of those things that I have wanted so desperately will come to me anyway if I just do the things I want to do anyway. Why make the whole journey about some terminal destination? The only thing that matters about my journey is that, today, I put one foot in front of the other and live the life I know best. To live the life that defines who I am, genuinely and sincerely.

That’s all I have to do. And that’s all that I am doing.

So my goals this year are quite different than the ones I’ve chosen in the past. I am immersing myself into three projects that will help improve my health and my writing, all at the same time.

The first project is to interact with a book I picked up called Meditations from the Mat, which is all about the practice of yoga, meditation, and spiritual health. I didn’t wait for the new year to begin to start this project. I began the day after Christmas, and I haven’t missed a day since then. Committing myself to these readings and writings has helped establish a sacred practice in my life, a foundation that is being solidified by my discipline and commitment to living a more intentional life.

The second project is do a virtual thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. More on this soon, but in preparing for this hike, I am now walking daily and building up the number of steps I take (what a difference a pedometer is making in my life!). This hike will begin on my birthday, on March 3. I’ve section-hiked much of the AT, but I’ve always wanted to thru-hike it. When I decided to get married and have a family, though, I tabled my dreams of thru-hiking for at least 15 years. By then, I’ll be in my mid-to-late fifties, and I cannot wait that long to fulfill this goal (such a goal, anyway, is flawed like all of the other goals I have set in the past). However, I can do a virtual thru-hike by tracking my travels (governed by the number of miles i walk each day) on a separate blog. I will have all of the same intentions as a thru-hiker who is actually on the Appalachian Trail; the difference is that I will be transferring my miles walked daily to the hike I’ll be chronicling online. Not only will I be walking daily, I’ll be familiarizing myself with every step on the 2167-mile trail and losing weight in the process. Such a journey will work well with my Meditations project.

My third project is to develop and refine, through writing and workshops, a new approach to writing. This concept, which I am calling metalogical writing, focuses on the writer’s awareness and application of three things: who s/he is as a writer (awareness of voice) and how s/he thinks and learns, the form the piece needs to take to serve its ultimate purpose, and the needs and the attitude the audience brings to the piece. I launch my first workshop on this concept on January 26 at Towson University.

These three projects and active, dynamic, where success is not contingent upon a certain weight being achieved or a piece of writing being published. Every day I am immersed in the journey I am taking, and my success comes from the steps I take today and not the things that, for whatever reasons within and beyond my control, may never even have the chance to happen.

I’m a sucker for resolutions. It’s just who I am, and I find new starts to be a very good thing for people. It’s one of the few times in the calendar year when we can all slow down just a bit and recognize what we can do to make our lives, and the lives of those around us, a little better.

My resolutions this year are a little different than in previous years. My children are at an age now where my successes and failures are very apparent to them (especially H, who’s now 10). Therefore, my resolutions focus more on outcomes for the greater family rather than for me.

That’s not to say that I will not be achieving the personal goals I set for myself; on the contrary, if I meet my greater outcomes, it almost certainly means that I’ve met my personal goals as well. Logically, it would seem that, to succeed for my family, I will need to succeed myself.

So…here they are, in no particular order.

1. I don’t need to write more; I need to publish more of what I write. With the exception of a few weeks where I didn’t do much writing at all at the end of 2006, I am fairly happy with the quantity and the quality of my writing. Now I need to get my work out there. I need to find an agent who can represent both my fiction and my nonfiction writing. I need to get my work out there, circulating, and I need to get paid for it.

2. I need to be home more with my family. I love teaching, and I love where I am teaching, but writing allows me to be home with them much more, and the amount of travel I do when I teach is just too much on me. There are times when I feel as if I am separated from my family, and I get a week with them at Christmas and two months during summer, and that’s it. People keep telling me, That’s Life…get over it. But I can’t get over the fact that I rarely see my family. It’s time for writing to be my primary and teaching my secondary. This puts me home more in 2007, especially later in the year, where I need to be.
3. We need to move. We’ve outgrown our townhouse, and our children need a yard. They need space to play freely and safely in a world they can call their own.

4. I need to continue on my spiritual path toward health and healing. I cannot allow the rush of the busy academic semester coming up to derail me, as it always seems to do. I need to hold on to this discipline, this ritual, this structure, and heal myself so that I may better serve others.

5. All this, I need to do with patience and with understanding. With love and with care, with hope and with belief that all things are possible…

The upcoming new year will undoubtedly bring many highs and lows for us; it’s what we do with them that matters. The Tao says let it flow. Let it all flow, the good, the bad, the mediocre. Let it come, let it go. Offer no resistance to it, and it will do no harm. I’d like to think that, with this short list of resolutions for 2007, this way of thinking, of living, will be possible.

May we all find the strength and the love to make this year all that we know it can be!