New Year's Resolution

I have never done a New Year's resolution, and I don't mean that I have never kept one, I mean I have never made one. I've never really believed in them, maybe at one point in time they were goals people set and actually met, but with every year that passes the New Year's resolution becomes just another thing to do, like kissing your loved one at midnight. I don't see any point in making a resolution if you have no intention of keeping it. But with 2011 around the corner and my desire for it to be different from any other year in my life, I'm thinking why not start it differently? 


I took my cousin to get her tattoo yesterday. We spent five hours in a cubicle while she got poked and bled all in the name of decorating her body talking about everything from boys to work to what's next. Somewhere during the course of the conversation my grandma and my role in her life over the last year came up, and though it is hard to talk about it's never a conversation I would shy away from. This time, however, it was different. I was telling a stranger about what happened, but I was doing it in front of someone who was there with me, someone who watched it all happen. My cousin saw the best and worst sides of me over the last year, she saw the tears, heard the frustrations. When I needed someone I found myself on her doorstep. Every other conversation about the past year that we (my cousin and I) had with an 'outsider' I let my cousin do the talking, this time she was busy trying not to scream. I had almost forgotten she was sitting there until she chimed in with, "She handled it better then most of the family did." 


I didn't know she had been watching. Well, I take that back, I knew she was watching, I just didn't realize she was watching me. She was down in the trenches with me, I didn't have time to watch anyone, I didn't think anyone else did either. I was wrong. 


All of that to bring me to my "resolution". Whether I like it or not and whether I wanted it or not I have an audience of at least one, four with absolute certainty, and plenty more I'm sure I'm unaware of. That's a good size circle of influence. Whatever I do will either motivate someone to follow my lead or someone else's depending on whether or not they like what they see. So my resolution is to pay attention to what I'm doing, because if people are going to be watching me I want them to see something worth seeing.