Alex Masica

Is anyone else not overly ecstatic about the idea of “new year, new me” status updates, blog posts, and resolutions? I was recently discussing with a friend about how I don’t understand the significance of celebrating New Year’s Day and the idea behind “starting over” once a year. To me, these types of resolutions and thought patterns seem to fall down faster than they were constructed.

Although I usually try to fill a void in my life or change a habit when I spot it rather than waiting until January 1 to declare all the changes in my life, I wanted to share with you a few things I am going to try to be better at this year—and hopefully well past the year of 2014.

I am going to write more.

I am hoping this blog will help me be better at this. I have always been so entranced by the written word and storytelling. I used to write a lot more during high school and then fell out of the pattern once college came around. I started forming ideas for a novel (the few friends with whom I’ve shared the plot line tell me it’s going to be a best seller!) but that is going to take more much more time and energy than a blog will. So in between figuring out characters and conflict, this blog is hopefully going to help me share some of my favorite things with you.

I am going to help more people without expecting anything in return.

My friend Emily blogs over at Choosing To and she recently wrote about Selfless Sundays, where she does something good for someone else every Sunday. I think this is a fantastic idea and want to work on doing that, too. In a society where we’re only looking out for ourselves, it goes a long way to let someone (even a stranger) know you’re looking out for him/her, too.

I am going to send more snail mail.

Don’t get me wrong—I love email, texting, and FaceTime. But after being so heavily saturated with digital communication, getting a card in the mail with a handwritten note is like winning the lottery. I can’t believe how many young people don’t even know how to address an envelope or why we have zip codes. I’m going to send a handwritten note or card every other week this year to different people in my life, and hopefully to people with whom I’d like to reconnect. If you get a card, don’t expect to see cursive—I forget how to use that a long time ago!

I am going to read more.

During college, reading seemed like such a task because it was page after page, chapter after chapter of seemingly boring, dense content. But now, I finally have the time and desire to read for pleasure again. I bought a Kindle Paperwhite about a year ago and love it. I find myself reading books much faster since I can adjust the font size and leading (the space between the lines) to my comfort. I used to think I was such a slow reader but now I think the text was just too small in books. Although I’m not going to set a goal for a number of books to read, I would be happy with finishing about 50 this year.

What are you going to do?

Instead of telling me what your New Year’s resolutions are, what are you working on this year? Leave me a comment below so we can continue the conversation.

So this is that obligatory first post almost everyone does when they start a blog, right? You know, the one that gets them motivated and hopefully allows them to spill all of their feelings out to decide how to proceed. We’ll see how this goes.

I’ve blogged in the past, albeit not very consistently and without a unified theme. I was introduced to blogging in college, where I was required to do it for a few classes. Eventually, the idea around blogging caught on with me and I loved doing it. But still, I couldn’t find those one or two things that I thought I could consistently, week after week, month after month, write about without sounding like a broken record.

I’m hoping Better with Family will be the answer to that problem. When I started thinking about themes and topics for this blog, I think I wrote down about 50 different ones. Some were topics about one specific thing that I knew I couldn’t write much about but the others turned out to be the inspiration for writing today.

On this blog (or site, however you want to think about it), I will be chronicling my life as a 20-something and learning to live a life on my own terms. I’ve picked five large themes to focus on: food, life events, photography, home décor, and graphics.

These five themes seem to be what matter most to me. But with a twist, they’re also things that I think are important for everyone to share with their “family,” whatever that word might mean to you. To me, “family” encompasses everyone in my life who matters most—from my mom and dad to my best friends from college. I encourage you to share these events (and your own) with your family, whomever those people might be.

So thanks for reading. I’m not sure what this road looks like even six months from now but I’m excited to find out. Welcome to my family. I hope you enjoy the journey with me.