Another year has come and gone. As I said in my last blog post, I experienced both highs and lows in 2014. I hope to experience even greater success and endure potential failure with just as much resilience this year. Like every new year (except for leap years, of course), 2015 offers 365 days of possibilities and opportunities.

I’m looking forward to a lot of things this time around. For example, I’m greatly anticipating the release of films like The Avengers: Age of Ultron (hopefully, Joss Whedon and Co. can recreate their 2012 critical and commercial success), Jurassic World (I’ve seen every movie in the series, so I’m curious to see how the filmmakers will reinvent the “people trapped on an island filled with dinosaurs” scenario), Terminator Genisys (the premise sounds interesting, although the spelling in the title does great violence to my eyes), Ant-Man (I’ve always enjoyed the Ant-Man character), the Fantastic Four reboot (Marvel’s original family gets a second chance at having a good series on the Silver Screen), The Peanuts Movie (I loved the comic strips as a kid), and, most of all, drumroll please….Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (I love Star Wars as much as Nebraska loves college football, so hopefully you can understand the extent of my passion for that galaxy far, far away).

I’m also looking forward to my nineteenth birthday, which will finally make me a legal adult in the state of Nebraska, and I can’t wait to see what the end of my freshman year and the beginning of my sophomore year at UNO has in store for me.

Some of my goals for this year include getting a better handle on my emotions—any man worth his salt ought to when it is and isn’t appropriate to express his sensitive side—get more in touch with nature, start saving up money for retirement, read at least thirty-five books, learn a new skill or hobby, sell a couple hundred copies of The Bully Buster, have some of my writings (e.g. short stories, poems) published in professional magazines, run an “extreme 5K” (http://goo.gl/9r6RE5), go to the upcoming O Comic Con Venue in Council Bluffs, and build a closer relationship with God.

How about you, dear reader? What goals have you set for yourself for this year? And how will you go about accomplishing them? I can’t wait to see what 2015 has in store for all of us.