I spent my breakfast reading about this week’s bombings in the Moscow subway. But I retained – and therefore learned – nothing.

Making resolutions isn’t the most productive tradition ever – you’re promising things under duress that you don’t plan to deliver on. Worse is when we make unreasonable resolutions that we can’t deliver on.

Which is why I won’t make resolutions.

"Resolution" by Sneeu on Flickr

I did, however, set some goals for myself after writing that last post. Last year was only slightly better than a wash – great things happened, but I also very nearly bottomed out more than once.

So I’m making some changes, and I’m sharing some of those with you.

These are not resolutions – they’re changes I honestly want/need to implement, and I’ve arbitrarily set the end of 2010 as a deadline. Some of them include:

• Writing a song a week
• Recording at least twice a month
• Writing a poem a week (I already do this, somewhat, but I’ve been known to pull an old poem or two)
• Quit smoking
• Read books more than Reddit
• Hang out with my friends at least once a week
• Do more nice things for Kerry (flowers, dates, what have you)

I have no idea how many of these I’ll actually achieve, but I plan on being accountable for these decisions. They’re all attainable, and I’ll be satisfied if my success is less than 100%, so long as I can note some actual progress.

This list of goals is substantially less than complete, but I’m not willing to share every last detail of what I intend to bring to 2010. I hope that the year at least rewards good intentions.

The problem was that I was looking for a pen, but couldn’t find one. So I dumped my whole bag out and got rid of the trash.

Which is when I realized how much stuff I carry with me every day.

I carry this crap EVERY DAY

All of which I honestly feel is necessary, even if I don’t use it every day:

• Nice Panasonic headphones
• Ancient, big, heavy iBook
• iBook charger
• work-branded thumb drive
• Lego-shaped thumb drive
• Four books
• Two iPods
• iPhone
• No fewer than six Molskine notebooks (each of which, I swear, serves a different purpose)

It’s no wonder my back is sore most days.

The fact of the matter is that I need to further declutter. Hard decisions need to be made about what stays home.

Because I never did find that pen.