In the continued spirit of the New Year, I wanted to share my one-- all-encompassing --resolution with all of you: to be happier.

Last week I wrote about all the good things that happened last year, such as becoming editor of Brenau's literary magazine and my daughter turning one. Which made me realize that, by all rights, I should have been over the moon.

Especially since I've been working on my own Happiness Project after reading Gretchen Rubin's book of the same title. But alas! I just felt busy, overwhelmed, drained...

After seeing Laura McKowen's post on Instagram, I came to the conclusion that a lot of it was a perspective issue.

Instead of appreciating my daughter's party as much as I should have, I berated myself because it didn't look Pinterest-worthy enough. Instead of congratulating myself for making it through a year of college as a new mom, I wallowed in the guilt that I wasn't staying home with my daughter and pureeing all of her baby food myself from organic scratch or whatever.

But I want to do better this year. Because things will never be perfect-- an epiphany I had about a month ago --and life is slipping by. My daughter's childhood is going to be over sooner than I'd care to admit.

(I suffer from self-diagnosed preemptive nostalgia.)

So from now on, I am going to consult my future 80-year-old self and ask her what she remembers of the year 2017 before I send myself into a spiral of self-loathing for getting a speeding ticket because I was engrossed in my Half-Blood Prince audio CD. And she'll say, "That's not even a blip on my radar. Don't you know I won the Nobel for literature?"

P.S. Even though I have been "experimenting in happiness," I want to resolve to recommit to the project because, more so than not lately, it's become a source of feeling failure.

So by shifting my perspective and focusing on the positive change instead of the botched crockpot dump dinners, I'll hopefully be a lot happier-- and that's the whole point of this endeavor, right?

If you think about it, that's the whole point of life. Isn't it?