Good for me, but perhaps annoying for the people around me, I have a tendency to be a bit introspective. This means that on or about this time of year I start looking back on my year and thinking about what I want to achieve in the next.

For 2009, I had only one stated resolution, and that was to bring more of my life and the world of HR into this circulation. On January 9, 2009 I wrote:

“Last spring, I wrote an entry in a circulation after finishing the book Marley and Me. Over the holidays we went to see the movie. I sobbed through most of it; not because it is a sad movie, but because it is somewhat of a “Killing Me Softly” story for me. In a way, as the song goes, he’s telling my whole life. I am a bit envious that John Grogan found a way to write about his life in a way that was interesting enough that others would want to read. I also am envious because he is able to show how his bad dog has helped him to write stories on all sorts of subjects.

One thing some of you may not know about me is that I was trained as a journalist and was a writer in my first career. The writing bug has never left me, which is why this employment opportunities list sometimes includes stories from me. It is a canvas of sorts. Anyway, I also have a dog who at times I believe to be a candidate for Worlds Worst Dog, who is a great muse for all subjects human resources-related. If you can see where I am going here, since I have all the right ingredients, my resolution is to start writing more about things I see and learn, and more particularly about the human side of being in HR.

Over the holidays, I also read Bad Dogs Have More Fun which is another one of John Grogan’s books. In it, he writes about how James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces (and by the way, someone my husband knew well in elementary school) was hung out to dry because he embellished his memoir. Grogan set the record straight that the story of Marley is sometimes embellished. As is natural for me, I do intend to embellish, modify experiences to make them more slightly more interesting, or change them to protect the identities of the innocent. So that there are no misunderstandings later, I’m confessing this up front.

I hope you will tolerate this and also enjoy it. I also hope you will give me some feedback if something I write impacts you. This will help me to keep to my resolution. As we all know, positive reinforcement is motivating.”

For this year, my resolution is take this up a notch. My dog Daphne has always been a great inspiration for writing humorous stories that can sometimes be woven into HR commentaries, but there’s so much more that I can do. I was thinking about this the other night while watching an episode of Top Chef. Ultimately, the winner of Top Chef is someone who can showcase the most about themselves through their culinary expertise and presentation. Being the Top Chef is as much about personality as it is about the food itself. I am thinking that there has to be a way to make this work for the HR Profession. Actually, I find it interesting that office culture can be the perfect backdrop for just about every sitcom, and that there is a TV show for virtually every career except HR. Is this because we are generally not very funny people, or is it that there is so much confidentiality that it proves too difficult to properly shroud the facts/players to make a point (I personally run into this wall regularly), or is it because no one has yet figured out how to showcase the profession?

Where there is a will, there is a way, and it is my resolution for 2010 to make every week’s edition a “must read” for everyone.