I have been thinking quite a bit lately about New Year's Resolutions. Generally, in the past, I have hated the idea of making resolutions at New Year's. People always seem to resolve to do things like lose weight, which is really rather absurd, for a weight-obsessed culture like ours to do anything that makes us focus even more of our attention on something so shallow. What I object to is New Year's resolutions set with the aim of "self-improvement." These seem to be so burdensome to people who spend all their time and energy focusing on this idealized version of themselves that they're trying to get to, rather than the person that they are and the life that is going on all-around them. I know from experience that that kind of goal setting will only lead to self-castigation and self-disappointment if I try to pursue it.
However, this is not to say that I am necessarily against people trying to better themselves. The way that I am trying to think about it this year is more amorphous, like what directions do I want to pursue in 2009? What paths should I head down in a more intentional way, where would I like to see myself having moved towards at the end of this year? I don't want to set any agendas, make any graphs or charts, detail any daily checklists. But I do want to be intentional about the kind of person I am becoming.
So, with that end in mind, one of the things I would like to pursue more this year is to become a more intentional writer. I think that I have always had a really hard time with making art and writing a part of my identity. The terms always seem to encompass so much that I have been afraid to apply them to myself. I have been afraid to make the switch from "Yes, I write stuff sometimes," to "Yes, I am a writer." But beacause of my self-doubt, I think I have actually tried to distance myself from the craft since graduation. As though, yes, that was something I indulged in in my foolish youth, but now I've moved on to more productive hobbies. But the fact of the matter is that I am writing all the time, and I think I just need to commit to doing it in an intentional way, with an eye to the craft of it. Along with that, I am hoping, hoping being an operative word, to be able to post more to this blog this year. I think we have all taken note that posting once a month really doesn't cut the mustard. I had hoped to be able to post at least once a week, and that just wasn't happening, in part because I think I set such exceptionally high standards for myself, that the content much be deep and the language beautiful before anything could be posted, so I ended up with these epic treatises that I could only get around to writing about every month. I of course want to respect the time of anyone reading this and keep an eye on quality, but maybe not to such an extent that I paralyze myself. And I think friends would appreciate hearing from me a little more often, for the sake of keeping in touch.
Another facet of this writing thing is that I would like to start using my degree in a lucrative manner. I am not really sure what this would look like, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately because my friend Dan has a degree in choral conducting, and so he goes around and conducts choirs. Seems pretty simple, but this has been striking me as a revolutionary idea because how many of my other friends have jobs that actually relate in any way to their degree. I am not saying this in the sense that the degree is the important thing, but most of us chose our degrees because we thought we'd enjoy jobs working in those fields. So why aren't we in those fields now that we have those degrees? Well, there are actually a number of reasons that that is probably the case, but I think in my case it also has a lot to do with that distancing thing I was just talking about. I don't know if a job as a "writer" (whatever that could mean) is necessarily in the future, but perhaps, publishing? I just have this strong conviction that I shouldn't hold myself back just because I feel unqualified. I'll let someone else tell me I'm unqualified. I want to believe that I could do it until I find out differently.
So, any ideas where I could go with this writing thing? Or, do you have any New-Year's-amorphous-non-resolutions to share? Do tell!
I have a couple more thoughts about directions for the new year, but in the spirit of posting more frequently and briefly, I'll stop here for today...
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