The Thursday! Newsletter 2-8: The New Year Coming Down
Volume 2, Issue 8
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but a new year is right around the corner.
Isn't it cute, that new year, trying to hide behind that shrub? Awwww. It looks so hopeful, doesn't it? So desperate to surprise us so much we shriek and drop whatever we're carrying and maybe stand there while it laughs at us with unbridled delight? Then we'll run over and hug it and it'll smile and we'll all be happy together.
Not like the year we have right now. That big, fat faker, wearing the happy face and promising way better times so we'd give it our trust and affection. How easily it sucked us in before it gave us a feeble shrug, told us "Welllllp, you're on your own now", and doddered off without a single care in the world. Boy, that year really put one over on us, huh? Silly us. We won't let that happen to us again, right? Ha ha! Hee hee! Hoo, boy!
Okay, maybe we shouldn't make promises we surely can't keep. Of course we look at the new year as a clean slate. We try to forget whatever parking lot full of flaming dumpsters we left behind us and stride forward into a lovely meadow full of butterflies and promise! We humans are suckers for the seduction of the new. The old thing is wicked and soiled and possibly the worst thing in the history of all things. The new thing is, well, new! Clean! Perfect! Like that lovely notebook you just bought in anticipation of the new year coming down that you plan to fill with only the best words or the sketch book which pages you will cover with masterpiece after masterpiece! It's beautiful and we can't wait for the new to grab the hold by the scruff of its dirty neck, stuff it in a storage box, and consign it to one of the deep stacks in the back of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Except we know, deep in our hearts, that's not how things are going to work. We won't fill the notebook with perfection. Our art won't be wonderful and acclaimed as we imagined. We'll scuff and stain it with some of our imperfect self and it just won't be pretty anymore. It'll be old and schmutzy like the last year and the one before and the one before. Just another lost year. Might as well get the new notebook for 2023 because THAT will be our year, the perfect year, the year everything works for us like we've hoped and dreamed. And just like that we've given up on the year before it even gets started. We spun our wheels at the starting line and so we shut down for the whole race and put our fine race car in the garage. We'll get 'em next time.
Or maybe you're made of more determined stuff and you work hard to get past that initial bad start. You run a bunch of laps -- a quarter of the race or maybe a third? -- and you see that you're not catching up quite as quickly to where you imagined you'd be before the flag dropped. You get disappointed and there you go to the garage.
The latter is what happened to me this year. I got off to a pretty solid start with my very first book, published in February. I had plans for a second or perhaps even a third before the year finished up. Then, it didn't happen. None of it. It's not going to happen. That particular plan is not only delayed indefinitely, but dead as a doornail. I didn't get past it, though. It kicked me hard in the gut and doubled me over. I stayed that way most of the year. Oh, I worked on some other things, but none for books, none to build my writing career. I pulled the car into the garage and revved it a few times, just to make noise like I was still in it. I wasn't, though, and I knew it though I'd not admit it very loudly to anyone else.
The new year is almost here, though, and I have a choice. I can either do what I've done the past couple of years and stay kicked when the inevitable gut-kicks come or I can straighten myself up and keep moving on whatever direction I think will work. Here's the deal: life is full of boots just looking for a gut to kick. I'm going to get my share. So will you. So will everyone. Can't help that, right? What we can do is decide just how long we're going to stand there, hunched over, tears in our eyes, frustrated and angry. Maybe we stay there for weeks or months. Maybe we just give it up for a while. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we stand up, still aching from the boot, still teary-eyed, and we do the next thing. We write the next story or poem. We paint the next painting. We sing the next song. We fire it back at the world and see what happens when we do. We take the next step on the path we decided might work for us because the path is still there. Life didn't necessarily kick the path away when it kicked us and if it did, it surely didn't kick away our ability to walk a new path. We know where we want to go. Might as well take the next step. Sure, we're sore from what happened before, but we'll be sore anyhow. We can be sore standing still or we can be sore will we take the next step and the step after that.
And if you think life's gut-kicks have spoiled your plans, well, that's okay, too. You can make a new plan as you go. No worries. Honest. So long as you're getting closer to a goal you've set, you're golden. Don't sweat the goal, either. No one said your goal had to be big. No one said it had to take years to get there. Maybe you want to write a big epic story. Great! Write a scene. Then write another scene. Keep writing scenes until you get chapters or episodes or whatever you like. More scenes become more chapters become a whole big story. Goal joins to goal which joins to goal until, like Voltron, they combine to become one super goal!
We can't avoid feeling like New Year, New You is how it works even though we know full well it doesn't but we don't have to make promises we'll hate ourselves for making later on when we break them.
There's a new year coming down. I can't tell you what it has in store for you, but I can say for sure it doesn't carry perfection and ultimate fulfillment. It may not carry you to the big goals you've dreamed to reaching. That's okay. You have a whole bunch of small goals you can knock down, one by one, on your way to the big one that...well, you know that whole Voltron thing? Yeah. You might just get there. Be ready. Be imperfect. Be human. But be moving forward. I'll come along with you if you like. Come on.
Let's go.
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What I Wrote Last Week
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One Last Thing
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