I just wrote an entire blog entry about my resolutions for 2010. About thirty seconds ago, I deleted the entire thing.

Every January 1st, I come up with a list of goals for the upcoming year. In 2009, it was to read fifty books. I read fifty-one. This year, I actually came up with six goals. But I just threw all of them out the window. Just now. I just came up with a new resolution.

Out of the fifty-one books that I read in 2009, I felt that only one was deserving of a 5-star rating*. That book was Donald Miller’s A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. The book is a memoir about Donald editing his book Blue Like Jazz (another memoir) into a movie. The people writing the movie with him want to change some details from the book (and from his real life) to make them more interesting for the movie. Donald goes into depth about what makes a good story, and how rather than editing your memoir to make it better, you should just live a better story to begin with.

Donald Miller recently wrote two blogs about New Year’s resolutions, or more accurately, an alternative to resolutions. The blogs can be found here and here. These blogs inspired me to make the following “resolution” for 2010:

Live a better story.

What does that mean? It means that I need to make climactic scenes in my life. I need to try new things even if they make me uncomfortable. As Donald Miller says on his blog, “The idea is to create scenes this year you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and to invite others into the thrill of being alive.”

I still have some goals that I want to accomplish, but years from now, I won’t remember them. I won’t remember paying off a credit card. I won’t remember how many books I read. None of that will matter. My resolution is to live a story that I will remember twenty, thirty, sixty years from now. By then, I may not remember that it was 2010 that the memories were made, but it won’t matter.

This year will come and go, but the memories I make in it will last forever.

* My book rating system: 5-star = I loved it, 4- I really liked it, 3- I liked it, 2- I didn’t like it, 1- I hated it

Tags: 2010, Life, resolution, story

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