I wrote this post for HSA and thought I'd share it here too.

I haven't made any New Year's resolutions, per se. However, at the start of this new year, I have been rather contemplative and have several goals I'm working toward.

In general, I'm working at becoming more disciplined, both in my spiritual life and in other areas. I'm trying to become more diligent in studying the Word, memorizing Scripture, and generally reading, watching, and listening to more things that are edifying. I want to be more purposeful in studying and improving in the things I'm interested in, such as web design and photography.

To sum it up, I want to spend my time wisely, to live to the fullest serving God and others, to grow and advance, both in my walk with God and in my hobbies and interests. I want to be able to look back at the end of this year and see ways I've done these things, to see ways I've grown and changed and things I've learned.

It's also been a time of reminiscing, thinking over ways I've changed over the last year, and even two years. I can see ways I've examined standards and preferences we have, and adopted my own. Not that I didn't do that before, but I've fine-tuned them a lot in the past year. Though, in some ways, I feel like I'm turning into an old fogey, especially when I realize I'm almost 24. ;)

Oh, and another thing I want to work on this year: getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. ;) I had started getting to bed and getting up earlier several months ago, but, well, old habits die hard. :P

Just a short note to say Happy New Year!

I've been rather AWOL from a lot of online stuff and IM lately, and even longer on LJ. Between being sick a lot, problems with my back and wrist, and spending time with my family and doing holiday stuff, I haven't been doing much online. I hope to catch up here soon, and I'm going to make an effort to post some of my goals for the year and post updates as I work through them.

I'm rather sick right now, so still not doing much online...not doing much at all, really, except getting a lot of rest and trying to get myself healthy again. Hopefully I can get in touch with the doctor tomorrow and get on some medicine.

I hope everyone is having a great 2008 so far!

My feelings on this holiday are rather varied. I'm grateful we have the freedom we do have here, and comparing America to other countries, we've got it pretty good here as far as freedom of religion and the ability to homeschool, two very important things to me. So I am grateful for that, but there are so many problems with our country and the government, and things are only getting worse. We're having more rights taken away, and the government is getting larger and larger, trying to take over things it doesn't have the constitutional right to take charge of. God is being taken out of more and more things, unless someone wants to sing a song asking Him to bless America. But why should He, when it's departed so much from His ways? Why should He bless a country that's trying to kick Him out of the schools, the courtrooms, and every other place possible? This is a good article regarding America's departure from the constitution and the state our country is in today.

While there are many things to be grateful for, and we do have reason to celebrate the freedom we do have, I think too many people gloss over the problems and worship the country in the name of patriotism. I have nothing against a love of one's country, but the country shouldn't be exalted so much that people will follow the government blindly. We should remember the principles the country was founded upon, and take a step back to see how much the government has departed from that. We need to be aware of the issues arising and see the freedoms being stripped away from us. So while we're grateful and praise God for the freedom we have, let us not ignore the corrupt state of our country or exalt it as "one nation under God", when it's turned so far away from our Lord.