My Life v8.5

The start of a new year is when a lot of people make the effort to change their life.  Resolutions are made to do the things they’ve been meaning to do for some time.  Stop smoking.  Lose weight.  Get a new job.  Finally ask her out.  The list is as long as the number of people on the planet.  

I don’t like “resolutions.”  Because along with the making resolutions there is the tradition of watching yourself fail at them.  The gym membership that goes unused.  The unopened pack of cigarettes that gets found in a drawer.l  The stumble and fall off the wagon.  

Following a year like 2020, I wonder how basic these resolutions have become.  Instead of getting a “New” job, how many people are resolving to simple find employment.  A continuation of a process forced upon them because of the virus induced recession.  

I don’t like resolutions.  But, I do like goals.  And one thing 2020 gave me, which I referenced in a previous blog entry, was a desire to be more positive and optimistic.  A desire to change my life for the better.  So, instead of making a list of resolutions, a list of things I would really like to see happen, I am writing up a new version of my life as if it were a program, an application I might download to use to get something I want done.  This can be considered a rough draft of the latest version of “Me” that I want to upload into the shared world that we are calling “2021.”  There will be bugs.  It will need to be redrafted when internal conflicts and loops are discovered.  It is an on-going thing.  Such failures are part of the debugging process and do not represent a critical failure unless I decide to discontinue the reprogramming process.  It is the embodiment of the Japanese saying, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”  

So here are the features I am rewriting my life to include in “2021.”  

My Life v.8.5

First, a change in motif.  “Make Progress in Life Everyday.”  That is the theme behind the changes.  This theme is intended to do two things.  One, to give me a focus each day when I wake up as to how I want to go.  To move toward a life I choose to live, as opposed to just dealing with the existence I am going through based on the circumstances surrounding me.  As the Kabbalistic seers of might say, it is an image of the Future I want to see reaching back into the present to make the changes it needs in order to Be.  The destination of the journey in more layman terms.  

Two, it is incremental.  It won’t happen in a day or week.  It might not even be realized by 12/31/21.  It is something to move toward every day.  Maybe three steps today.  Maybe five.  At least one.  I might get pushed back a foot or two.  But I’ll do my best to make up ground the next day, and the day after that.  

The specific features I want to include in this update are…

Travel.  This was the first thing I wrote in my journal yesterday when writing out by hand what I wanted in 2021 that was absent in 2020.  It is probably the most significant loss as a result of the pandemic.  I have become used to going to places I haven’t been each year, and not being able to do so diminished my life experience.  I want to correct that.  

I started the process when I rescheduled the flight to Japan I was supposed to take in April last year.  The airline allowed me to do so without and fees to change the date, though any further change will cost me.  I’m now scheduled to fly into Haneda Airport on October 1st.  I’m hoping by then enough people will have been vaccinated to relax all the travel restrictions thrown up as obstacles.  I want to include the side trip to Korea, my first visit to that country, while I’m there.  I’m also hoping to go to a World Science Fiction convention this year.  It is scheduled to be in Washington, D.C. in August, which will hopefully give me a chance to see our nation’s capital for the first time and add a stadium, or maybe two since Baltimore is relatively close, to the list of Major League parks I’ve seen games in.  I am going to plan for too many trips instead of too few.  

Writing.  This was something gained in the Year of Loss that 2020 was.  I had stopped writing out of frustration.  I started again during isolation.  This year I finished an outline for one novel I’d been stuck on for years to finish its rough draft.  I started revising the rough draft for the fantasy novel I did finish.  The ball is already rolling in this area.  

To pick up the momentum, I’m going to schedule different writing activities during the week.  To start, on Sunday, I’ll work on my blog.  A weekly goal to write something coherent to share.  On Saturday, I focus on shorter work.  Short stories I want to finish and submit.  I will set myself a goal of a new submission every month.  I’ve done this before.  This is where “Fall down seven times…”  will be used to its fullest.  

A Home.  This is the scariest.  It is the one I always felt was out of reach.  It’s the one change that I wonder to myself, when my pessimistic self is on the ascent, if I’ve waited too late in life to even try.  But, I’ve decided to be positive.  Optimistic.  To not let feeling helpless get in the way.  I’ve spoken to a realtor and a lender.  I have about half of the money I need to make it affordable.  Getting the other half is the problem.  Thinking I’m only halfway there makes it feel more doable.  I’ll hold on to that feeling and explore my options.  

A Partner.  This is the most amorphous but also constantly pressing desire.  It’s also the one I feel I should keep deliberately vague.  I think my problem in the past has been being too specific in what I was looking for in someone to be my significant other.  Focusing on “features” I wanted for this “component” in life, rather than the feelings I wanted to convey and feel coming back.  Right now I just want to acknowledge the space in my life I want to fill, and let it pull me in whatever direction I should go.  That sounds so new-agey.  But it has the advantage of not having been put into practice before.  

I will end here.  There are more features, along with some of the tools I am collecting to use.  But this is the napkin diagram of “Me v8.5” that I want to release to the world.  The work has started.  I hope to announce a release date soon,

I enthusiastically wish you all a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous, Empowering New Year and hope to see you all achieve whatever Dreams you may have.  

Ever Forward!