I’ve never really been a formal “New Year Resolution” kind of guy. What I mean is that, like many of you I’m sure, I’m generally a pretty private person all around, and always have been (this is a main reason I have never had a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, for example). As such, I tend not to go about announcing my (short or longer-term) plans of personal betterment for the future with strangers, even when it’s basically innocuous personal self-improvement type stuff like ‘exercising more and eating more heathy’ that virtually all can relate to or identify with. My personal shortcomings (as well as my strong suits) are mostly my own business that few need to know about, other than The Almighty, and a very select few persons within my close circles of kith and kinship.

“Don’t ask me no questions, and I won’t tell you no lies,” as the old adage has it.

That much said, I certainly feel comfortable sharing with y’all at least a couple of personal aspirations I hope (and will strive) to achieve, or at least personal defects I aspire to significantly improve upon, during the course of the next 360 odd days or so; particularly with respect to my participation in Southern Nationalist activities and my related contributions at this site. Two of the main ones are as follows:

• I hope to have the Maury book – The Life and Times of Matthew Fontaine Maury, Pathfinder of the Seas – fully edited and ready for publication by spring of this year. I wrote the draft chapters or the manuscript for the book a long time ago. My plan going forward is to “double-down” on getting the remaining dozen or so chapters edited for publication in the near future, to write an introduction and compile a bibliography, and to gather and organize three to four appendices I intend to add at the back of the published work. (Note: if any of you out there should like to write a Foreword to the book, please by all means let me know);
• Several months ago, I verbally committed to writing one article per month here at Identity Dixie specifically discussing, as some of you might recall, important and interesting historical events as they happened This Month in Confederate History. My initial commitment to that ambition, although sincere enough at the time, wasn’t a very strong one, as evidenced by the fact that only two such articles have emanated from my keyboard since I first announced my intentions of writing them in the first of the two. That is a defect on my part that I fully (and formally) intend to correct in this month and the next eleven months of 2023 to come. I expect some of y’all to strictly hold me to my word if and when I flounder in that renewed commitment; none of us is or should be unaccountable; each of us, especially yours truly, should be held to account for that which we promise, yet fail, to deliver. And no excuse beyond physical or mental disability is good enough; as Southerners and Southern Nationalists, “our word is our bond” is not just a quaint saying we throw around for convenience sake. We need to keep our promises and commitments when at all possible and in spite of “more pressing matters,” whatever they may be or how truthful they are “as far as they go!”

But all of the above was just a prelude to what I’m most interested in learning from you, dear reader: I’m most interested in knowing what some of your New Year Resolutions for 2023 are. I’m not asking you to share your “innermost secrets and defects” of course, but those more or less innocuous personal defects and failings (we all have them) of yours you aspire to improve upon or even fully correct in the coming days and months; those natural human shortcomings or ‘less than laudable’ proclivities of yours that you may safely share with the rest of us, “without hesitation or mental reservation.”

Be duly warned, however, that “anything you say can and will be held against you in [the court of Southern Nationalist opinion],” courts of American jurisprudence wholly notwithstanding. Therefore, if at length you decide to “plead the 5th” and exercise your right to remain silent, I for one will perfectly understand and defend your decision to the hilt. No guarantees on how anyone else within our circles will interpret or respond to your “right to remain silent” and to “lawyer-up,” though. Everything has its drawbacks.

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