Someone once told me that instead of making new year’s resolutions, they choose a word that they use as their mantra for the year. I’ve decided to adapt that and instead of choosing something very broad (like that) or something very specific (like a resolution), I’ve come up with some short, directive maxims that will be my inspirations for the year. I feel that they are interrelated but distinct, and so far I feel like this strategy will be an effective one for me. Already I’m more inspired by the possibilities, while less tied down by rules.
1. Find Balance.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good work-life balance. I left my old job, almost a year ago, because I was working too much overtime with not enough to show for it. The past year I’ve been mostly freelancing, which, if I’m honest, usually involved more of the “life” part than the “work” part (and was not, ultimately, sustainable for that reason). At the end of November I started at Ubisoft, a company at which there seems to be the possibility for reasonable work hours. So a big goal for this year is to just settle in and find a good routine of work, sleep, exercise, and fun.
2. Create More.
I was actually reasonably creative in 2019, but there are a few specific things I’d like to focus on. One of those is writing - hence setting up this blog - and the other is photography. I’ve learned about myself that to be inspired to create, I need to have a place to put my creation so that it will be seen. Maybe that’s not ideal - cue the lectures that I should be creating for myself, not other people - but whatever the reason, that’s how I operate. My music and arranging has actually been moderately fruitful because I’ve started posting to Youtube and have gotten some great feedback. I used to write all the time in my LiveJournal, but that community has disappeared, and there doesn’t seem to be a good replacement. I’m hoping that keeping this blog here on my website will be a reasonable alternative. Similarly, Facebook isn’t really a great place to put photos, and it takes so many steps to get photos from my camera to Instagram. But I’m working on optimizing that, and my parents gifted me a year’s subscription to my favourite photo editing software, and I’ve already taken more pictures on my good camera since Christmas than I have in the rest of 2019. I’ve decided to think of this blog as “some views” - that covers posting pictures AND writing. Hopefully by having this system for posting in place, it will pave the way for me to Create More.
3. Strengthen Foundations.
I am an ambitious person. I like to be good at things, and thus I sometimes jump a little farther ahead than I really have the capabilities for. For example, I was taking singing lessons a year ago with the goal of being able to sing beautifully on my own rather than as a background harmony part - but really, my tuning is not consistently accurate and that’s a much more basic skill that I should improve before worrying about being flashy. Similarly, I spent a lot of time in the fall working on memorizing and writing Japanese kanji, but my weakest skill is being able to understand simple Japanese when it is spoken to me, and that’s a much more rudimentary proficiency that it would make sense to practice first. This last goal is just a reminder to slow down, take stock, and make sure I have foundations in place that I can build on in the future.
Already I’m glad that I sat down and took the time to write out my thoughts. I haven’t quite figured out how I will let you know when I have an update here, but I do hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it, and that you’ll continue to follow along. :)