New years is coming, and I intend to spend the next ten Sunday mornings reflecting–and planning on how I want to live. New Years is my favorite–by far–of all the holidays. I love the built in sense of renewal. I love that it follows Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love that my birthday (St. Patrick’s day) is about a quarter of the way into the year and I can reflect on my start. I have big plans–giant plans for 2009. I feel like I’m me for the first time in years–probably ever. I have–I think–finally shed the brittle and anxious piety that comes with Midwestern Christianity. I’m in a headplace where I can actively create more parts of my life without thinking I have to look over my shoulder to gain the approbation of the mediocre. (Thank you, Greg Swann, Andrea, Heather, Jeremiah Arn & Tim Harris for lighting the path, and especially thank you Heather for giving me wide latitude to be insane).
Every new years eve has failed to excite me. I’ve thought that it would be this reflective and anticipatory time to be able to bite the ephemeral. I thought always that everyone would be building something together, and being constructive. Didn’t happen. I’ve felt bitter disappointment over a lot of them because I thought somehow that there would be this meaning, I’d have a chance to reflect on a year that I’ve had, and that I could journal, log, think. I’ve rang in the new year always wanting some event. The Robert Kiyosaki book (don’t recall what it is, I trashed them all), that talks about some Damascus experience on new years mountain has been what I want.
Bright, clear guideposts in a muddy world. And kiddo, they don’t exist.
Nobody is going to remove the resistance so you can be the dude you wanna be. Best case, they’ll be neutral. Neutral is considered supportive, so be grateful when people aren’t actively resisting you. And if you have someone supporting you in your life (parent/spouse/collaborator) cherish and honor them, and renew them in every way that you can. Because anything that reflects your energy back to you, and enhances it. God, that’s the dream.
We/I want meaning to be handed to me, processed and packaged in bite sized capsules, you know, “this is the year I finally learned to love,” or “that was the year that I finally figured out who I am.” But it’s growth or decay. An incremental slide, either growth or decay. Change doesn’t happen through milestones, miracles and mysteries solved, it happens a little tiny bit at a time, inch by imperceptible inch. You decide to set course for stuff, and if you’re me, you flail around fighting yourself because your expectations for love, romance, sex, recognition, money, life, fatherhood, education, property, fitness, business, & adult hood itself have all been different from the reality that’s here.
Creating and sustaining energy, recreating yourself, working hard, taking real risks (it’s not a risk to not have a day job…it’s a risk to let others define you). Isn’t easy. I’m not a virtuoso, and I’m not someone that has this energy that’s burning and bursting (compared to my standards–other people are slugs). But, you have to avoid–by all and any necessary means those that attack that.
In our lives, what time is taken to simply reflect, recreate, and renew. I don’t mean what are some ‘recreational activities’ (Nintendo/tv/restaurants & shopping). I mean: what are things we do to recreate ourselves and exfoliate the debris that the world puts on you? Deliberately, what do we do? An artist’s date? What what what?
The opportunity though, is to create meaning is extraordinary. To really refine and define what I want to live and the way that I will do it. The mac helped, the reduction in cash need helped, everything that I’ve done has helped. This won’t be a panacea but it too will help, to have a standard that’s soberly examined.
There are 10 more Mondays (11 including the day that this post goes live) left in the year, and in that time, I want to figure out some sort of plan that can cover the areas/widely in my life & the things that I do. There are lots of things to spend an hour or two on. Fitness, Money, Marriage, and there are things that I’ve never processed discussed or put out there to deal with. And there’s time to do it. Sunday mornings. I’ll start with the (important and low hanging fruit the easily expressed) and move from there each Monday.
The (again, tentative) schedule:
- 10/27: Fitness.
- 11/3: Money
- 11/10: Clutter
- 11/17: Art & Writing [salient thought here: will smith: "I don't want to get too metaphysical, but by even contemplating a Plan B, you almost create the necessity for a Plan B"]
- 11/24: Goals (Personal & Business: what the goals are and how they came about)
- 12/1: Materialism (Weddings, ceremony, commemoration, phoniness, starbucks was the canary in the coal mine).
- 12/8: God
- 12/15:Marriage
- 12/22: Family Stuff (TBD)
- 12/29: Scheduling stuff. (TBD)
I am committed to doing, more or less, one of these a week for ten weeks. I want to be both at the highest ‘thought’ level and the practical level (so I’ll figure out a budget and figure out why something is in the budget).
Related posts:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
You're right. I did love it. Great stuff.
Also, Artists Way is very good and pushing me in a positive direction. Thanks for the recommendation.