Growing up, on New Year's Eve, my family would sit down around the dinner table, and everyone would fill out a sheet with their goals for the new year.  Goals for health, finances, school (if applicable), work, things of that nature.  I remember being quite a bit younger and being gung-ho about filling it out.  Mine was usually filled to the brim in each category.  But then the satisfaction of writing down my goals, and reading them aloud for all to hear was enough for me, and I didn't really try after that to stick to them.

Then, as I got older, I stopped filling out that sheet.  I knew I wasn't going to try to meet anything I wrote down as a goal, so why try?  It was a waste of my time.

Here's the thing I've learned over the past 5+ years:
Having a goal (or goals) is good.  It's easy to get lost in life when you aren't working towards anything, and you feel like you're just uselessly meandering along, because you aren't trying to achieve something, some kind of small point in the future.  Goals help motivate, help you move forward, help you keep hope alive.
On the flip side, though, while having a goal (or goals) is exceedingly beneficial, what's not beneficial is shouting to the world what your goals are.  I once heard someone put it into words what I already knew but couldn't articulate.  But basically, it something like the satisfaction or even praise you get from merely stating your goal, tends to be enough for people, and they stop after they say what they intend to do.  And since this is the case for, I think, everybody, I have found it's better to make goals, but keep them to myself, knowing that I'm working on achieving them.  And once I'm there, that is when I can tell the world what my goal was...and even better, that I met it.

I haven't written down goals in years.
And it's still not something I'm inclined to do, to be honest.
But.
I do think that this year I will try to make goals for myself throughout the year.  Goals that I sincerely want to accomplish and achieve and will quietly work towards with all my effort.  I think it's better that way.  To have goals throughout the year, throughout your life, rather than to sit down right as the old year ends, filling out a paper you know damn well will be eventually tossed, with nothing crossed out.

Goals are good.
What good is life if we aren't working to grow and mature and explore and seek out?
It's not much of a life.

This year has been better (and worse) than I expected.
And I have no expectations for this coming year.
Regardless, all I know is that I want to continue to improve, to learn, to work on myself, to mature...and so much more.

Here's to another year of learning new things, of understanding myself better, of working on loving those around me.