With the opportunity to write a column for FIRE CHIEF's first issue of 2011, I couldn't resist the urge to opine about the obvious topic. It's that time of year, again, when we traditionally take stock of ourselves, our organizations and our careers, all with the best intentions for making substantive positive changes over the next 12 months.

But if you're anything like me, you start strong and fast, but all too quickly become enmeshed, embroiled and entangled in the crush of your daily grind — both at work and at home. Before too long, you realize that the list of 10 (15? 20? 25?) resolutions doesn't have any check marks. Oh well, there's always another 10 or 11 months to get back on track towards achieving those goals, right? After the budget is approved, after the kids go back to school, after the economy improves, and after ...what else?

What's on your list of 2011 resolutions?

Spend more time with the family? Reduce property damage and life loss from fires in your jurisdiction? Take a vacation? Get a residential-sprinkler ordinance, law, or regulation passed? Lose weight? Participate on a NFPA technical committee? Don't check your smartphone at dinner? Keep the size of your e-mail inbox at reasonable level? Enhance your labor-management relationship? Get to the gym a certain number of days each week? Turn off your pager several nights per week and let your deputy/assistant chief handle any emergencies? Go back to school? Run for office in your local, regional, or state chief's association? Finish your degree? Join the IAFC? Apply to the National Fire Academy? Drive slower? Recruit, hire, and train more firefighters? Keep firefighters from being laid-off or resigning? Eat healthy? — which is not to be confused with going on a diet. Build a fire station? Keep fire stations from being closed or browned-out? Always wear your seat belt — always? Get a new job? Keep your current job? Attend your kids' school events? Pay off your credit-card debt? And did I mention going to the gym?

Perhaps it's no surprise that we often fall short of achieving everything on our lists. After all, there's a lot to do — we're busy people with many different, and seemingly incompatible, responsibilities.

Recognizing this fact, and as a potential alternative to the usual scheme of developing a (short, medium, or long) list of resolutions, a process that often leads to eventual failure, I'll offer a simple idea based on a slightly different meaning of the word "resolution."

This year, I suggest making a single commitment: to display our resolve to do whatever it takes to avoid the tragedy of another firefighter fatality. Think about it. That single statement covers the entire list of things that we — and those whom we serve (both inside and outside our fire departments) — need to do this year, starting right now, which is to lead safer, healthier, more effective and — dare I say it — happier lives.

Now, I'm not naive enough to believe that we'll be successful right away. But I do think that if we work deliberately toward that single goal, eventually — inevitably — everything else will fall into place. It's not going to be easy, for these are difficult times and the "new normal" we thought we understood just five years ago has been replaced with a "newer normal" where the challenges we face are only the beginning of a journey into more uncharted waters. But one thing, the most important thing, hasn't changed: people are counting on us, at home and at the fire department, to keep them safe and protect them from harm.

As the slogan said in London during the World War II bombings — when it seemed that things couldn't get any worse — if we just: "Keep Calm and Carry On," there's nothing that we can't accomplish.

Happy New Year!

Adam K. Thiel is fire chief for the city of Alexandria, Va. He is a former executive director of the Virginia Department of Fire Programs, deputy fire chief of the Goodyear (Ariz.) Fire Department and career lieutenant with the Fairfax County (Va.) Fire and Rescue Department.