MMXIV

tyunglebower ♦ January 2, 2014 ♦ 2 Comments

Happy New Year.

It’s a tricky time for bloggers. A goal-setting, welcome to the new year, looking back on last year, compare and contrast post seem almost compulsory. “How will he launch his 2014 blogging with a bang? What wisdom will he impart? How will he set the standard?”

Bit of quasi-pressure there, folks.

Then there is my own propensity to mark occasions with some sort of ritual of observation. I’m a ritualistic guy after all. (And perhaps with certain things a somewhat obsessive one.) So there’s a little self quasi-pressure. Or quasi- self-pressure. So many options when one makes up a term.

Yet I’ve already parted from these tendencies a bit. Normally I think of something witty or at least memorable and amusing to say as the ball drops, to make it the last thing I say in a year. I follow it up a few moments later with something witty or at least memorable and amusing to begin the new year.

This go around, it went something like this, as I sat once again alone and sober on my couch with zero guests, having been invited nowhere:

Ty: (5 seconds until New Year) “I’m not going to say anything profound this time.”

Ty: (5 seconds into the New Year) “I’m not going to say anything profound this time, either.”

No particular grand gesture there. However shall the tone of my 2014 be set now? Truth be told, though I wasn’t intending to at the time, (I was just tired of trying to be witty at New Year’s), I think perhaps I did in a sense set a tone. If I had to some it up somehow, I suppose I’d say it just being instead of being profound.

That may or may not work as a motto, I have no idea, truly. But the point is, I have many goals this year, as I always do. I will achieve some and totally whiff on others, no doubt. But it’s about just being there-showing up in an authentic way to do and pursue the things that are most me. Yes even many of the eccentricities. Many of the things I can’t justify to the world. Many of the things that I have in one way or another neglected. A less worldly approach that ironically is also less profound and memorable. An approach that embraces the tortoise over the hare. An approach that allows the notion of being to combine with the notion of doing to create the magic, faith, passion we all require so to get what we want.

An approach to a year that is similar to my approach to writing a novel; have a plan, use deadlines, be flexible, seek and take advice with discernment, but in the end tell my own story my own way, a  little bit every day.

So you see, it’s not profound. It’s not unique. It’s not amazing. I’m an actor and writer, so I look for and embrace the dramatic and memorable. Believe me I’m sure positive examples of such things will be a part of the equation. A transcendent property, perhaps. But for the first time in a while, I think in the end, my answer to “What are you doing?” is going to be, “what I’m doing.”

Think about it.

I’ll see you on Monday with some more solid, tangible announcements and plans.  I just had to get the damn, “welcome to 2014” stuff out of the way. How’d I do?