Beyond the New Year's resolution

Prompted by a Facebook status that said “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” I actually came up with some loft goals on Dec. 31- drink more water and complain less. You might notice the word blog appeared no where in my simple resolutions. While I’ve thought about starting a blog for some time I just didn’t want to resolve to do anything that I might not be able to accomplish. When it comes to resolutions I typically make them for the sheer purpose of boosting my self esteem. “Oh my goodness I drank 16 ounces of water today, how awesome am I?” I imagine myself saying by Jan. 15.

I did drink more than 16 ounces of water yesterday. And I do think that’s pretty awesome but I also realize how meaningless these annual resolutions actually are. Reading Donald Miller’s blog (http://donmilleris.com) reminded me that resolutions are just words on a page. And if those words don’t connect with the story you are writing with your life, they are empty.

So that got me thinking, what kind of story am I writing with my life? To be honest, this question has loomed in my mind since I read Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” this fall (http://www.amazon.com/Million-Miles-Thousand-Years-Learned/dp/0785213066/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244329343&sr=1-7).

Too often the stories of my life are introspective ramblings created by my own neurosis and insecurities. In contrast, some of the best stories I’ve heard are told by my grandparents are other older people I know. When I’m 70 I hope I can have more to say about my life than recollections of when I said the wrong things or offended the wrong people.

When I grow old I hope it's the silly episodes with my sisters and cousins, the fun times with friends or the summers full of road trips and concerts that I share with my grandkids. And I also hope I can look back on my life and say that throughout my career as a journalist I served as a voice for the disenfranchised and told the stories that wouldn’t have otherwise surfaced.

Six years ago I took time off from school to try to figure out what I wanted to do after college. I spent a year in West Philly through a program called Mission Year (http://www.missionyear.org). My time Philly completely changed how I viewed the world. A few months into my time there two of my roommates witnessed a drive by shooting. While walking through a park near our house they heard gunshots and dropped to the ground. While they weren’t harmed the incident did leave a casualty. We were all shaken up. The next day I scanned the through the Philadelphia Inquirer and found nothing about the shooting or the death.

During the whole year it seemed like I had entered into a forgotten, lost segment of society. The schools where I volunteered did not have books in some classrooms and most bathrooms at West Philly High didn’t even have soap. We had to walk through drug dealers on the corner openly making transactions to get home. Every day felt like an episode of “The Wire” (http://www.hbo.com/thewire).

I hadn’t actually scene “The Wire” before I came to Philly. The truth was I entered the situation very naive to the conflicts of the inner city. I knew all about small town drama and meth addiction. But I honestly had no idea that there were schools in the United States where less than 3 percent of third graders are proficient in reading. I didn’t realize that there were communities in this country where men are more likely to go to prison than graduate high school. I had never knew third-graders could flaunt there sexuality for power.

In Philadelphia I collided with a reality that I didn’t know existed. In Philadelphia I came face to face with new stories every day. “This is what journalism is about,” I thought. At the end of Mission Year, part of me wanted to stay in Philly. But I decided to come back to Kansas, finish my degree and see where a career in journalism would take me. I knew I would never forget the stories I became a part of in Philly and promised myself at some point I would write them.

I want 2010 to be the year that I make good on that promise. Donald Miller says we should create “inciting incidents” to propel our stories into action. This year, I signed up for a copy editing conference in Philadelphia. I plan to visit my old neighborhood in Philadelphia and hope that the trip will help me as a work on my memoir about my time there. I also created this blog as an inciting incident.

I hope it inspires people to ask me how things going with the memoir, because the idea that people might ask me how things are going will motivate me to actually write. I also plan to share some of the stories about I’m writing about Philly on this blog.

In the mean time I still plan to drink more water and complain less. Happy New Year!

-Arley