Whenever I'm asked what I think about New Year's as a holiday, my immediate reaction is to criticize it. I remember countless New Year's Eves in which I was without plans that lived up to the expectations I put upon the evening, as well as those in which I had exciting plans, but those plans devolved into chasing the next party, the next event, the next bash occurring in order to do justice to the year behind us, to prove ourselves the heroes of our own lives, and to have made a promising start on the year ahead simply by putting a fitting cap to the one passing. There's so much pressure on ourselves to "party", to "revel" to be "party people" like the people in movies, and I've never thought it worth the money, and effort.
New Year's has also been a time, traditionally during which I've participated in church ceremonies full of like minded people and emptied myself onto a page, filling that page with all the fears and habits and petty evils I want to eradicate from my life. Then I burn that paper and witness others watching their worries and shames go up in literal flames before we get down the business of filling another piece of paper with our hopes and plans for the year ahead. It's an incredibly potent and healing ritual, and I love it.
So, when thought of in that context, I really love New Years. It's a fresh start, a second chance, a clean slate, a recharge. Is this "new year" an illusion? A construct? Yes. But it's an illusions millions of us invest in and give power to, and there is an undeniable power in that. And there's comfort in knowing that as we strive to be closer to our ideals in the next year, we are in the company of others we admire, who's lives seem perfectly wonderful from our perspective, but who, like us, want to be more fulfilled.
I also find a lot of inspiration in New Years resolutions. I try to make them positive, so rather than "quit chewing my nails" I might resolve to take better care of my nails, which could involve getting more frequent manicures, moisturizing, etc. I also try to make them quantifiable so that I can stay accountable to myself, and I find I am more able to keep up with them if they are process oriented rather than product oriented. By the end of the year, even if I haven't "succeeded" by every metric, even if I wavered in execution, it's had to argue that the four, five or six months I took action toward positive change (excersising more, eating healthier, being organized, or writing every day) were poorly spent.
Finding the right resolution though, and finding a way to make that quantifiable, can be a challenge. Last years goal was to finish the first draft of my novel. While I finished 2021 with the draft still in progress, I devoted countless hours to it over the past year and have written well over 100,000 words of it. I believe I am over half way through with the actual writing and have the second half of the story explored, outlined, and thought out. Am I a bit disappointed that this mountain has turned out to be larger than it first seemed? Yes. Am I defeated? No. Because I've determined that I will not be defeated by the imperfection of this novel as I have been in the past. The fact that it took me 100,000 words of writing (much of which will end up being discarded) in order to get to the heat and heart of the story? It's all part of my process.
That said, I do feel secure in the belief that by 2023 this first draft will be complete. This dream is well underway, it's gained momentum. So rather than simply repeat last years resolution, I want a new one. I want to continue growing in a new way. Which way is that? It involves the desire to share more of my work and to put myself out there more often. It's another facet of "overcoming the belief that resultant perfection is the only way I can prove my worth to myself and the unknown world around me.
So the meat of my resolution is to "build sharing into my routine". It's taken from one of my favorite authors on creativity, Austin Kleon. If I can achieve this, then it means I will, by year's end, expanded my idea of what my creative output is, will have begun building a portfolio of creative work, will have made countless ripples in the lake of life, and will have proved to myself that I can create more work and not sweat every endeavor. In short, I will be much braver, as the only way to gain courage around creativity is to start creating courageously.
How will I do this? I will need to find a system that I can implement. I will need to make the daily steps of creating and sharing art my number one daily priority so they don't fall prey to procrastination. I will also need to realize that the feeling of having achieved these goals may not feel like I want it to in the end, as the reality of the achievement will always be different than the perfection of that achievement as I first birthed it in my mind's eye. Whichever way I end up feeling will be nine times better than the idea I'd had of that feeling, because "the idea of perfection" was destined to shatter, and the achievement of the imperfect is the best possible result, especially when I consider that the result is only imperfect in my own opinion, and only in relation to the fantasy version I dreamt up which helped fuel the eventual creation I made, and which may end up being the exact version that I needed to create and which needed to be read, seen, heard, witnessed, devoured.
(More to come...)
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