Ambitions

I've always shied away from New Year's "resolutions," as they seem so cliche.  However, that doesn't mean I have failed to make my goals, or whatever you want to call them, every year.  I always have the usuals:  lose 30 pounds, become more organized, etc., along with a few others.  Last year, for example, I decided it was time to get serious about reading scriptures everyday with the kids.  With the help of a very well done chart from the Friend magazine, we actually succeeded in reading almost every day.  (I loved this particular one, because it has reading blocks for younger kids that can easily be read at a pace of 5 verses a day.)  It's successes like these that push me forward to make new goals the next year.  

This year, along with all the others, I've decided that I have to somehow force myself to get up earlier.  It never fails that the evening I have decided, with much enthusiasm and determination I might add, to wake up the next morning at a particular time, is an evening followed by a terrible night.  I can't sleep, the kids can't sleep, etc., giving me the perfect excuse to sleep in.  Then, I wake up to the shouts of the kids and am behind the rest of the day, losing the battle I have against the television in order to get anything at all done for myself.  My feelings are put very well by Jerome K. Jerome in his short story, "On Being Idle":

If for some urgent reason I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it's then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra half hour in bed.  Aaahhh, how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again, just for five minutes.  Is there any human being, I wonder, who ever gets up willingly?  

If I can succeed at this goal, then it will greatly aid me in accomplishing the rest of them.  I feel that I'm going to have a tough time of it, but oh the joy in accomplishing a difficult task!  Also, now that I've told the world (all right, just my few faithful readers), I MUST succeed!