How to Succeed at Failed Resolutions

Well, it's been a month and half since the new year, and I can't help but wonder how resolutions are going for most folks.

I know that I made a good number - from ones carried over from the year before (Resolution One: Cook more genuine meals, Or How I Learned to Stop Boiling Ramen and Love the Oven), to the generic ones with my own little twists (Resolution Two: Exercise every day, DDR if nothing else!), to ones tackling my own specific problems (Resolution Three: Get up on time every day, since it's all too easy to be lazy when working a job where the only repercussions are the ones self-enforced.)

Like many folks, I failed at pretty much most of them. Utterly. Within days.

And I'm ok with that.

I'm ok with it because I didn't give up. I kept trying to adhere to them. And on some days I'd fail, and on others I'd succeed. And I'm getting to the point where I succeed more often than not. I'm proud of that fact that I'm failing, and not letting it stop me. The fact that I keep working at it is the important part.

Which isn't to say that I don't want to succeed - but there are different of levels of failure, in the end.

When I originally was thinking this over, I hadn't expected it to end up connected to webcomics - but the recent return of Avalon convinced me otherwise.

There are a lot of webcomics out there - many of them with a small enough audience that when the fall by the wayside, no one really notices. But then there are also big hitters. Some of them bow out in a graceful fashion - a lot of them are designed as complete stories. They are meant to end - and when it comes their time to go, they do so.

But there are also the ones that, well... burn out. Or have others things come up. Sometime life takes priority. And those webcomics go for weeks... and then months... and then years without updates.

And sometimes they come back.

That's what impresses me. That the drive behind people to finish them properly can be so strong, that they want to make sure to go through with it, even years after the comic's height has passed. The fact that I can think of multiple webcomics that have returned from the brink - some to wrap things up, others to go on as normal - is inspiring. It's the reason I keep checking back, every so often, with many of the other former greats that have meandered into silence. Some of them might not make it back, sure, and some people might have given up from the start. But the story is still there waiting in the mind of the artist, and one day it might make it back out into the open.

Because it isn't over until they decide it is.