First Post of 2013

tyunglebower ♦ January 17, 2013 ♦ Leave a comment

I break 17 days of blog silence with this, my first post of 2013. (After the daily blogging toil of Reverb12, I needed a bit of a hiatus.) Is it still appropriate to say Happy New Year this late into said year? Given the circumstances, I’ll say yes.

I don’t make official resolutions for new year’s, though I have set some goals which I suppose could be construed by some as “resolutions”. If that terms makes you happy, go right ahead and use it.

However, whether I say goals, resolutions, plans or some other descriptor, I won’t be using this post as a place to list same. It’s not that I don’t want anybody to know what I have in store for 2013. I’m sure I’ll be mentioning them off and on in posts throughout the year. Rather, I wonder what the point of sharing one big super list at the start of 2013 would be. I don’t believe any of you would feel comfortable enough with me at this point to act as “accountability partners”. (This being one of the alleged benefits of loud and proud public New Year’s Resolutions.)

Nor am I more likely to achieve any of what I want if it is posted here. Tacked to an otherwise unadorned wall in my bedroom I have a list on a sheet of computer paper scrawled out in my chicken scratch with a black Sharpie my intentions for the year. That will suffice. If I can’t stick to my own private list, I’m already hopeless. A public declaration of specifics won’t change anything.

Yet I have made such lists in previous years and have a success rate of about 75%, so I imagine I’m going to be in good shape for 2013.

There is no official theme for the year. No cute slogan through which I will undertake everything in the next 12 months. But if one were to extricate such a theme based on what I intend to do (and not do) in the coming year, one could do worse than, “playing to my strengths”. Yes, to a degree I have always done that. We all need to. But I find that playing to one’s strengths is not effective unless one also minimizes one’s weaknesses at the same time. In years past I have identified my weaknesses. And I have tried to improve upon them. (With varied success.) Now is the time to if not flat out ignore them, (though that is a temptation) at least not use them as a compass.

So if you were hoping for a big opening to the New year in the post, complete with broad philosophical explorations and meticulous, detailed lists of tasks to accomplish, I’m sorry to disappoint. But But I’m back now, so keep tuned in for my usual insights, observations, questions and conundrums.