Another year has snuck up on us. 2018 has departed and made way for 2019 in the circular straight-line we call life. We chase events each year, moving forward while looking behind at the past, reminiscing on good memories or lamenting the bad. As we approach January, we try to view it as a reset button in life, an opportunity to shed the detritus from our skin and pursue the things we’ve always wanted to change. But why are we waiting?
Too often in the past years, I’ve repeated the same cycle as many others have: I see New Year’s approach and compile my list of resolutions. Behaviors I wish to alter find their way onto the list, goals I wish to achieve, all attempts to pursue dreams that I could be trying to manage every day, instead putting it off until tomorrow.
It’s the procrastinator’s motto: why do today what can be put off to tomorrow?
Over time, I’ve tried to get out of the circular rut that is every year. It’s difficult, given that so many things revolve around a yearly calendar. Our vacations reset (if we get them) each year for instance. The calendar being reset each year reinforces the belief that time is circular rather than linear. So each new year, we are inspired to reset.
Honestly, I feel that this year, I need to follow along with the tradition. The close of 2018 has been rough, and though I’ve had plenty of great things happen through the year, a few other events (some good; some terrible) have left me feeling drained, struggling to steer this ship away from an iceberg that lay in my path.
But I’ve been able to avoid that iceberg, and thou life has been throwing me plenty of curveballs (I was never a good hitter in baseball), I’ve managed a few successes, such as the 307 days this past year that I had wrote. Or the over 330,000 words I’ve logged in doing so. I finished 6 projects (at least 1st drafts) and I published one short story. It’s a mixed bag.
As the holidays come to a close and routine is poised to resume, I am ready to begin yet again on a charge towards my goal: being a writer.
Why did I wait until New Year to push for this?
Timing. It’s all about timing. I’ve been priming my engines to get back into the routine of writing since late September, with sporadic successes. With the hectic particulars of the holidays, and my lacking the necessary skills in development, I’ve not done well in my reset ahead of now.
Despite this, I am still a proponent of changing now, putting the effort in now, if you genuinely want to make changes. Like with my writing in 2018, it was more spur of the moment urge to see if I could tackle a daily writing goal, which I did. Today is the best day to start, so I am starting today (or technically, yesterday as this is written on 12/31 and is my “today” in this post). Waiting until tomorrow, as I’ve done to this point, just means that there is no desire to change, or else I would have put the effort in today. Or I am being driven by fear. Putting it off until tomorrow means that I am one day further away from success.
Jeremy C Kester 
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