Here we are at the end of 2023. What a year it’s been. I hope you are all enjoying some downtime during this holiday season. I hope you are all spending time with family and friends. More importantly, take a moment to think of everything we have to be grateful for. Despite all of the challenges we face, there is still so much to be thankful for.
As 2024 looms ahead, I’ve been thinking of what my theme for 2024 is. What is my primary focus? What is my main goal, in addition to everything that the year will encapsulate? After devoting lots of thought to what my mental focus will be, I’ve boiled everything down to one word; joy. Joy is my focus for the 365 days.
Allow me to elaborate. There’s a lot of people, supposed experts and self-professed guru’s who talk about ‘goals’. Did you know you can spend several hundred dollars for courses teaching you how to set goals? Mind you, that’s just the price for learning how to set goals. If you want to know how to actually accomplish your goals, that’s several hundred more dollars. What a way to make a living.
I’ve come to a different conclusion, one that saves me about a thousand dollars. I’m all for setting goals and whatnot, I have plenty of goals for the upcoming year. But this is not the first year I’ve set goals. I’ve done the whole ‘New Years Resolutions’ thing for close to ten years now. Guess what my success rate has been? Something like maybe half of a percent success.
As it turns out, I’m not alone. Polls show that out of all the people who set New Years Resolutions, 95% fail within the first three weeks. Clearly something is seriously wrong with the way things are being done. So what needs to change?
In my own case, I’ve wanted to write a book for years, with zero success. I cold’ve simply just floundered along, and done exactly what I’ve been doing for years now. It’s like a bad song on repeat, I get all excited for the New Year, I get into a creative high for about seventy-two hours, then inevitably I get derailed. This year, I made myself a very nice schedule. I have to say, it was beautiful. A work of art practically. I had a well-laid out plan to have a book finished and published before April. I put it on my door, in all of its organized glory. Day one of the new year, I downed some coffee and put some music on, and proceeded to work on what I was convinced would be a masterpiece. By day two I had reached an outrageous level of conceit, vainly imagining my Pulitzer Prize speech, while staring at my two and a half pages. Day three progress crawled. Day four I sat around and accomplished nothing. Day five, nothing. By the end of the week, I started bemoaning the trials of being a writer. By the way, I had barely completed three pages by this time. My beautifully scripted schedule ended up in the trash later.
So what’s different about this year? This year I’ve shifted my focus. Did you notice a trend in my week of accomplishing nothing? I had forgotten the most important aspect of what I was doing. I never once sat down and thought about why I wanted to write. I had become so wrapped up in the technical details, I had completely lost sight of my purpose. I sat down and put aside an entire day to think about why I wanted to write. Why this dream even mattered to me in the first place. It’s no wonder I derailed as fast as I did.
I had completely forgotten the thrill of reading and that stories are a tremendous source of joy for me. Earlier this year I was browsing books and I came cross a copy of “The Fellowship of The Ring”, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I didn’t read the book, I just stared at it. And stared. My mind became awash in memories. I read this book a really long time ago you see. I never forgot how well Tolkien was able to capture the feeling of scope surrounding Middle-Earth. The quest to destroy the One Ring truly felt like a sweeping epic. I looked at that book, and remembered that it was “Lord of The Rings” that inspired me to write in the first place.
“Lord of The Rings” is still to this day, my favorite book series ever. I haven’t even read it in years, and Tolkien’s masterful series still captures my imagination in a powerful way. Just looking at the cover after all these years makes me happy. That’s why I want to write books. I want to write the sort of books that would give others that same level of happiness. Even after years have passed. Joy. That’s my theme for the New Year.
