I am sure every blog in the world has posted something interesting on this topic today and I do not want to be left behind. Yet, again, I do not want to sound clique or cheesy.

So, here I come with a few of my personal tips on what NOT to expect from the famous resolution list.

To start off: Get rid of the damn list.

You know as soon as you write something before you have actually done it it becomes an indelible mark on your conscience if you then, for one reason or another, do not keep word to it.
So, why not make it a point to eliminate sources of auto-flagellation and auto-failure instead than creating more as your New Year’s plan?

If you know you have a hard time keeping commitment to yourself or others, just make less of them. Do not make a heavy list of cumbersome ‘MUST-DOS” when you know you can actually accomplish only half of them. That’s lying to oneself and, as it’s deceiving to do, it’s also un-rewarding and useless while you just crossed the doors in the new year.

Resolving what you want to change of yourself and what you, indeed, like and want to keep constant, should be a continuing process that does not peak at NYE and then drops down to be unnoticed in few weeks. Don’t you think so?

So, do not get hang up on talking about going to the gym more, eating less sugar this year or finding the love of your life  and commit to be honest to what is INDEED achievable to you and when.
I cannot believe the dreamer in me is letting me say this, but something I have recently learn from a good friend helped me to understand we often make plans that are off our reach and, when we fail at achieving them, we get disappointed at ourselves only to then make more of the same plans and feed the vicious cycle of ‘broken dreams.’

Well, this year, I dare myself NOT to do this. Will you?
Happy 2010 to all my fellow readers from my hometown Rome

The last day of the Jewish festivity of lights, also known to us as Hannuka came on a Friday this year. It was one of those misleading New York days in which the sky is blue and the sun is so bright you are drawn to grab your jean jacket and a baseball hat and go about the day just as you do on a summer night-out, but as soon as you poke your nose out the door, you realize you can barely feel the tip of your nose, let alone your finger tips.

On that same day, I found myself wandering about Williamsburg, the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, just before lunchtime. The cold air had made my index finger numb, but I still could not stop firing my camera incessantly.
My dad and I walked directionless for few hours, getting lost off the beaten path toward family-owned bakeries, showcasing loafs of freshly baked Hallah bred specially braded in shining egg-syrup for the entrance of Los Shabbos, the day in which God rested.
The Jewish mama who saw me disappearing behind her counter, kneeling down to take photos of her sweets, must have thought I was looking for a secret recipe, while instead, I was just mesmerized by the abundance of bread and Hannuka doughnuts this petite, hunched-over woman made that day.

I know it may sound weird to understand what the fuss is all about, I was not visiting a foreign country, I was just around the corner in one of the most well known Jewish hood of the Big Apple. But, to me, a Roman Jew who grew up around Jewish friends and taking Hebrew classes until college, that place felt foreign and therefore intriguing.
Only in Israel before had I seen so many kids running home from school hiding their tallits tails under their black coats chasing sunset before Shabbat.
Here is what I captured during a frigid afternoon in Williamsburg…

Just look at his innocent face. Do I need to say more?
He is, by far, my VERY favorite movie producer (I think I watched Annie Hall 10 times) and now, it makes me happy when I hear the sound of the clarinet in the background of the movie Manhattan and he is the one playing it, thinking I have heard him live.

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot,”Robert Louis Stevenson.

Many have asked and to many I have answered, but time has come to make this “move” official since I have finally found a house

I am on my way to depart beautiful Washington, D.C. toward a new life adventure in New Orleans with final destination few months later in the Brooklyn hood of New York City.

Chance wanted that one silly Friday afternoon, I walked in my usual Vinyasa Yoga class and my lovely Yoga teacher shared with me some piece of information about a photographer she was friend with who needed an assistant for a project he was going to put together in Louisiana.

So, here came my opportunity.

I have often talked about having chosen the journalism path to travel and to experience the “globe granite underfoot,”and when the occasion seemed to have knocked at my doorsteps, I opened. So here I come. New Orleans’s inhabitants watch out, you will have one more crazy Italian on the loose on your streets during the Carnival!!!

I will make a quick (one month) pit-stop in Italy on my way to NOLA, but from Jan. 25 on until beginning of April, you will find me in the post-Kathrina region photographing (and hopefully still teaching Yoga) as many hours a day I can.

Thanks, DCists, for these wonderful 2.5 years of love, growth and political savviness. I shall return!

P.s.–I will be posting as much as I can about what I will be shooting, seeing, feeling, eating and, if time allows, I will resume “the Yoga Column” for once and for all. In the mean time, stay tuned and hang on to your chairs. More to come in few days.

Moket.it is a Jewish, Italian monthly I contribute to with photos and captions of strange and interesting things I am often surrounded by, such as this wonderful Yogi from Israel, Natalie Thaler, 33, who came all the way from Herzelia in Israel to Washington, D.C. to earn the money so, one day, she will conquer her entrepreneurship dream of opening her own Yoga studio in Costa Rica.
She so slips her free time sleeping and commuting to both Tyson Corner and Annapolis Malls to work for Onsen, an American beauty company that uses Japanese technology and retails for more than many pretty ladies are often willing to spend on anti-aging creams, but that does indeed nourish your skin better than Cleopatras milk baths.

Check out the Web site HERE :~)

Every Sunday from 11 to 2  at Perry’s in Adams Morgan Sofia, Gigi and Mama put up their show.