Chris Brogan wrote a different sort of New Year’s resolution post, focusing on three words as major themes for the year. Everyone else seems torn between making resolutions and saying that resolutions never work.

Here are my three, and even a bit of commentary.

• Love — I’d like to fall in love with a smart, exciting woman, introduce her to my children, and discover a new life.
• Build — I’d like to stop selling hours and begin helping clients build assets and build/create/ship my own stuff.
• Connect — I’d like to expand my connections to the startup community in NYC so I can better foster the success of others.
• And my stretch goal for the year is to finish Ironman Florida in November and raise $140,000 for REED Academy.

Love — I want to find a wonderfully exciting and interesting woman to fall in love with, and to fall in love with me. Remembering the best things about myself, like determination, commitment, and boundless energy, is the silver lining that I’m wrapping myself in these days. I will be worthy of being loved and find someone worthy of my love.

Build — while engaged in other big projects over the last five years, my business partner Mike and I had a slew of interesting ideas. Some were (and are) pretty great. But for a lot of reasons, I got distracted and spread my efforts out over a baker’s dozen of projects. Results: not much to speak of. And for a guy who used to pride himself on execution, that’s pretty disappointing. This year, I will be focusing my efforts on a much smaller number of tasks, looking to ship things as they are completed. And, rather than spend time trying to find a team to magically pull things together, I will kickstart my projects by building them myself. Creating something from nothing, even a scratchy alpha version, is a better way to excite a prospective team and start a company. I will take greater responsibility for building my future rather than expecting the universe to put it together for me like some nanobot do-gooder. (Yes, this includes writing vs. thinking about things I should write.)

Connect — for too long, I’ve focused less on my own friends and my network, spending time with other people’s friends and not in a good way. I thought that I didn’t like networking, that I was too shy, that I wasn’t confident and vibrant and helpful. But those things are not true. I enjoy pointing people in the right direction, making the connections that come naturally to me add dimensions to someone else’s plans. I will re-discover this part of myself and use it to help others find their paths and achieve their goals.