An Early New Year's Resolution

From the swoony movie The Young Girls of Rochefort, recommended if you happen to have a weakness for the technicolor musicals of the sixties, Gene Kelly's dance movies and singing French sailors.
Picture source: Design Sponge's "Living In" series.  

Starting this blog led me to unearth another that I kept during my early New York days (it feels like a relic of another era now).  I evidently trailed off after a list of New Year's resolutions for 2011.  As with most resolutions, I haven't thought about them much since then.  It tickles me that more than four years later, I've finally accomplished most of them (some just recently; I still need to work on keeping plants alive).     

I'm a resolution enthusiast, even if my resolve can be fleeting.  I used to approach each new year fanatically, with hand-written pages of good intentions TO LIVE MY BEST LIFE OR DIE TRYING.  Over the years, I've learned to stop fooling myself into believing that I'll give up refined sugar, hit the gym in the early hours or read a Russian epic every month.  Instead, I've found what works for me is one or two goals that add something to my life (as opposed to restricting habits).

In the year to come, I've decided to finally learn the guitar.  Years of choir, band and forcing karaoke upon friends have assured me that I have few discernible musical gifts.  That feels liberating, no?  To pursue something with no real practical purpose or plans to master it - simply for the joy of it.  

I'm considering a class at Jalopy, a roots music gem in Brooklyn that offers an incredible range of shows, along with reasonably priced community lessons.  And of course, YouTube remains an invaluable, endless resource for tutorials in anything, as well as for talented duos who melt your heart with their guitar Beatles covers.