New Year, New Goals
With 2010 under our belts, it's time to take on the challenges of 2011
I’m not the type of person who makes New Year’s resolutions, not because of any particular antipathy towards the holiday or the intentions of those who do make them. I’ve actually just learned from experience that any grand, sweeping promises of behavior change I make in January are pretty much out the window by Valentine’s Day.
Obviously, I’m not alone in this, given that my gym will be bursting at the seams come Monday but after a few weeks will be back to its normal, more manageable population.
None of this is to say that I haven’t made commitments to myself and others. Quitting smoking, losing weight and getting in better shape were just easier things to do on a schedule not determined by the holiday season.
Instead, I like to use the turn of the year to look back at where I’ve been in the past few months and think about where I hope to be in the next year. For me, it’s about goals — personal and professional — not resolutions.
I’m not the same person I was one year ago — the past 12 months have taught me a lot about what I expect from myself and what I hope I contribute to my family and friends.
We’re not the same LGBT community as we were a year ago, as we went through a political fight over ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that seemed to follow the template of a Hollywood script: raised hopes followed by intense crisis, certain defeat countered by a nail-biting last-minute victory. But a victory, nonetheless. Yet even as we celebrate, we have to look to the things that remain undone — ENDA and DOMA, most prominently — and figure out how we can move forward in a Congress not predisposed to our best interests.
And Metro Weekly isn’t the same newsmagazine that it was a year ago, which makes me both happy and proud. While we’ve always pushed to keep the magazine growing and vital, in the past year we’ve made big changes in the scope of our coverage, not only increasing our local news coverage but adding coverage of national LGBT political news. We’ve grown MetroWeekly.com into a website that’s more than just a reflection of the print edition of the magazine, with daily content and ever-growing video coverage of our community.
If you look at our masthead, you’ll see the names of the people who make Metro Weekly possible every week and every day. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have a full-time staff of people who are both talented and dedicated to telling the stories of our community: Todd Franson, Chris Geidner, Yusef Najafi, Will O’Bryan, David Uy and Aram Vartian. Any publication is the sum of its staff, from full-time to freelance, and I consider ours among the very best.
But as hard as all of us may work, our success comes down to you. Stories can be told, but they only truly matter when they’re heard. That’s why, looking back at 2010 and forward to 2011, we’ll be looking at ways to continue to grow and change Metro Weekly — to keep providing the best coverage we can for our readers, to be the best resource we can for our community.
On behalf of my co-publisher, Randy Shulman, and all of us at Metro Weekly, best wishes for the new year. We’re looking forward to being there with you every step of the way.
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