A pause in my blog provides a great opportunity for a New Year’s resolution.  An intentional three-phased approach may help avoid the 88 percent failure rate for such endeavours.

It has been two months since my last post.  Why does this feel like a confession or the start of a recovery program?  Perhaps because six months ago I intended to do this more often than I have and I am afraid of becoming an abandoned blog statistic. 

I am aware that silence is not a sin so long as speaking is not an expectation.  By acknowledging my absence, my post becomes an unnecessary admission of guilt to be mitigated by excuses such as my university assignment, a busy work schedule, video game playing and general internet surfing. If I were to post one of the ten half finished posts I have started, you would not think twice about the gap in time.

While comparison is a poor tool for justification, I am also conscious of the relative insignificance of my sin.  Coming out of the 2009 holiday season, I join millions of men thinking the same thing: at least I am not Tiger Woods.  Indeed, a blog pause is saintly when compared to the confessions of others such as Bill Clinton, David Letterman, Bernard Madoff, or the entire risk planning division of the banking system. 

A common element in these confessions is a purported desire to change.  While I do not place religious emphasis on the turning of the Julian calendar, January 1 is as good a time as any to renew old goals and set new ones.  The odds are against me at a 12 percent success rate.  Still, I must try.  My basic plan of attack is below:

1. Acknowledge the real past
   Rationally deal in hard facts, then assign responsibilities.  What events occurred to lead you to where you are?  What is yours to own?  What is not your responsibility?  Get to the root cause by asking the question “Why?” as many times as possible.  Be careful of your own revisionist tendencies to colour the past more to your liking.  
2. Define what is actual present
   Where do you stand today?  Are those events still occurring?  Are the root causes you identified still in play?  If the present situation is the same as the past, be conscious that the future will likely not change without intervention.
3. Commit to the new future
   What is within your power to change? With an understanding of who you are in your situation, what practical steps do you feel are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely)? 

A pause in blogging is not the end of the world, and completely understandable given my schedule.  Yet in acknowledging my past, I admit that the lack of consistency in the area shares systemic motivations with a number of initiatives I am targeting for 2010.  As I define my present, I am conscious that my actions or lack thereof are a result of who I am.  This feeds into my commitment for a new future to work within the potential and constraints of who I am to achieve practical SMART goals. 

I wish you the best with your resolutions.  I would love to hear your approach to change.  Whether or not you read something new here in two weeks will determine how I am doing with mine.