Why is the New Year always when people make resolutions to change or be better or do things differently? We’ve marked this shift, the flip of the calendar, the clock striking midnight as another chance to be our better selves. And yet, it’s just another midnight.

I do have resolutions this year. I hope they will stick. I want to live simpler, I want to be more connected to the people around me, I want to vanish most social media because I am a doomscroller, I want to read more, and I want to write more.

How these things happen won’t be linear and probably will look more like the rolling landscape of eastern Ohio, ups and downs, but slowly climbing into the Appalachian Mountains. Slowly moving upward.