I'm not a big fan of "resolutions." They seem artificially associated with willpower, and I think willpower is an incredibly inefficient means of attempting to accomplish anything. If you have to force yourself by "willpower" to do something you don't naturally want to do, usually it means that you're battling yourself -- rather than fully understanding your needs, wants, desires and fears and integrating them such that you know what you want and what you need to do to get/achieve it and you are energized and motivated.

[Please note: I differentiate between willpower and discipline. Discipline is giving that extra effort to break inertia and to keep doing what you need to do to move forward.]

Anyway, I've been thinking about what I want to do with my life. For the last several years, I've been working part-time for the school district as a data geek for the Healthy Start program and doing freelance webdesign on the side. To be honest, the website design gig has been pretty uneven: I'll get a client, put together a site, and then have lulls of a month (or two, or six) before doing anything else.

Since Hunter's been around (and even before, during my pregnancy), the website thing has been just kind of there: I have one client that I update and expand on a twice-weekly basis, and I did one new and completely revamped two other sites all of last year. I've been telling myself that I want to learn all these skills -- PHP, Illustrator, become more proficient at Photoshop, learn Flash -- so I can say I'm a full-assed designer (as opposed to my current half-dom) but I recently realized that I don't.

I want to be a mom.

I want to spend time with Hunter. I want to show him things and watch as he figures things out. I want to help him learn skills ("First you stab the squash with the fork, then you scoop it up!") and words ("Zebra! Railing! Gargoyle!") and concepts ("We do not grab the kitty's tail. It hurts kitty, and she runs away.")

I want to have a clean house. By "clean," I mean two things:

1. I can find things when I want them, and
   
2. When people walk in the door, they relax and feel safe and loved.
   

I want to cook and bake. I want to do craft things and scrapbooking. I want to make Hunter's Halloween costumes from scratch out of fabric and found objects.

I want to spend time with my husband: watching silly and/or romantic movies, talking about dreams or fears or Hunter or anything else that brings us closer to our hearts.

I want to play piano.

I have a few more projects I've committed to. Once those are done, that's it. I'm finished. The webdesign doesn't bring in enough money to make it worth my while to stress over it, and even more than the time and energy it takes to attempt to pursue it, it's the "not doing what makes me happy" element that produces the most stress.

It's not fun, and Life's too short.

I want to be a mom.