New Years Resolutions: Setting A Goal

Some people see the first of the year as a time to "start over" or simply "start", I personally think its just a mile marker on the side of my road in life. Life has taken some big turns in the last year and 2010 is set in history with its ups and downs and crazy turns in the road.

2010 was a great year for me. I had some personal accomplishments and some losses or setbacks too. I attended entirely too many funerals this year, which is highly upsetting. However I will always remember my friends and family that have past on and I will cherish the memories we have.

2010 was also a good year for agriculture in Ohio. We were able to pass some agriculture legislation dealing with the HSUS and we were able to put a huge speed bump in Wayne Pacelle's goal of speeding through Ohio on his way to "production meat elimination". Ohio passed the "Ohio Agreement" as it has been dubbed and we have had some political changes in Ohio which will lead us into 2011 and hopefully to the benefit of farmers and producers here. The Ohio Agreement is now a benchmark agreement that is helping other states like Missouri create their own version of livestock care standards which is obviously a good thing to us in agriculture.

I have been working on creating my resolutions for 2011 this week and I wasnt able to come up with the common ones like "lose 30 pounds" or "stop drinking pop". But I have decided on some goals I would like to meet this year and I hope that my friends and family wil hold me accountable to these goals.

First I want to strengthen my relationship with Christ. I am a follower of Jesus and I believe the Bible is the word of God. However, I feel that I am not as close as I would like to be.

Second I want to continue my pursuit of animal advocacy through my social media networks. My blog has become very important to me and I have built pride in it. I hope that people enjoy reading it and it helps them build opinions and concerns for some of the issues we face in agriculture. My goal is to write one blog a week.

Third is an idea that I have found and hope to pursue. I want to create an animal advocacy club at Ohio State ATI before I transfer to main campus. I have some strong ideas for what it could potentially be but I need help with organization and funding the idea at the school. This is a new idea in the last month and is simply something that I want to look into and hopefully get started by Septmember of 2011.

So hopefully I can work towards these new years goals as I prefer to say. I know I'm not the only one setting goals for the new year and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one setting goals for how I can help agriculture. I think the important thing to remember when setting goals is to keep it realistic, practical and reachable. Don't outdo yourself and hurt yourself trying.

Good luck to all on your new years goals and thanks for being here to support me as I embark on my journey of 2011 towards reaching my goals.