We never truly have a clean slate. I think that the assumption that we do affects our ability to plan and set goals negatively.

While every day is a new day and every year is a new year, the starting conditions for each are set by the days and years before. There’s no “base level” that gets returned to.

So use that to your advantage! Don’t try to build an empire on an empty plain, because you don’t have an empty plain. You have the lasting monuments and crumbling ruins of the empires of yesterday and yesteryear.

Knowing that, pick an area and improve it. Each day, week, month, year. Take one aspect and say “this thing will be better.” Keep going. Sisyphus without the boulder. There’s no top of the mountain, but there is always up.

Happy New Month! (And I guess also happy new year, but the new month is more important.)

I’m very excited about this month. My role at my job is evolving, and this month is the official kickoff of the next stage. I’m really amped for it, and so that’s the focus of my New Month’s Resolution – kicking off this new focus with 100% of my attention and effort.

I spent a lot of last month (successfully!) creating good paradigms for my “parawork.” The work that needs to be done in order to do the meaningful work you want to do. The reports, the organization, the scheduling, the emails. Even the “off-hours” parawork like making sure I have an environment in which I can do the best work, my kids are attended to during the hours in which I’m focusing, etc. I’ve created a good little sphere of my life in which to do good work, and I’m excited to get it rolling.

A recurring theme of the “new month’s resolution” bears special repeating here, in this month – don’t set goals with a timeframe of a year. That’s ludicrous. The level of direct ambition has to match the time-frame. Build habits by the day, build milestones and course corrections by the week, build goals by the month, and make planning frameworks by the year.

Happy new month to you – and may all of those things be successful!

This year I blogged every single day. I put points on the board every time. They weren’t always great. I didn’t “win” each day’s battle. That’s not just about my writing here – it’s about life.

But, I think, I won more than I lost. I came out ahead.

In certain very real ways, this place was a lifeline. A way for me to focus, to anchor, to force myself to be better. To have something to show for each day I survived. Maybe just proof that I was here.

It was a good habit to build, and I’m more glad than I can tell you for that buzzing sound I hear now in my mind if it approaches ten o’clock and I haven’t written yet. That reminder to collect my thoughts, to refine them, and to find the most positive and/or helpful among them.

I hope that, as a positive externality, you benefitted.

I hope that sometimes this was funny, or insightful, or thought-provoking, or interesting, or enlightening. I hope perhaps it spurred on conversations or daydreams or strange mental tangents. I hope that it was, in other words, an opportunity for you – to think differently, maybe even better. I hope it continues to be that, because I have no intention of ceasing.

I made it through the whole year. If you’re reading this, so did you. For all the harrowing experiences this year brought, I had many, many joys. I will allow the things that hurt to fall away with the last page of the calendar, and I will carry the joys with me forever.

See you next year, my friend.

Left to her own devices, my eldest daughter constructs elaborate, fantastical scenarios of all kinds. She builds permanent fortifications out of any raw materials she can lay hands on. She invents devices to move objects around in arcane ways whose purpose I cannot fathom. She paints, programs, draws, cuts, and shapes. In between these things, she runs, jumps, climbs and reads.

In short, I have very little worry that my daughter isn’t finding sufficient stimulation for her agile mind, even now.

Tonight, she solemnly handed this to me. I feel like the beginning of a great adventure is afoot.

“I will sail across the ocean, if nothing prevents me.” – Seneca the Younger

As an early Stoic philosopher, Seneca shared this insight. Seneca wanted to illustrate that hard work and virtue were important while still accepting that at least some part of your success is in the hands of fate. Certainly the best archer in the world has a greater chance of hitting a target than a novice, demonstrating that your effort does matter. At the same time, even a master archer doesn’t hit the target every time – a deer may suddenly dart in an unexpected direction, a bird may fly in your path, the bowstring may break. How to maintain your drive in the face of fate’s ultimate influence?

Seneca’s phrase: “I will sail across the ocean, if nothing prevents me.” It’s a way of being comfortable putting in all your effort (note the “I will,” and not, for example, “I’ll try to”) and not blaming yourself for any ultimate results, only holding yourself accountable for putting in the best effort possible.

I love this lesson, but I think it may be incomplete. Far be it from me to presume to add to the great philosophers of Rome, but I think the modern era features a kind of mistake that I see people make, even when following Seneca’s lessons.

I would adjust the phrase thusly: “I will sail across the ocean, if nothing prevents me and if I don’t decide to do something better.”

Many people anchor themselves to grit and determination – admirable traits, I say! And they create solid action plans to accomplish their goals – equally praiseworthy! But they leave no room for new information, new choices, even new evolutions of your own desires.

Virtues, commitments, and paths of honor are worth committing to. Values and beliefs should not change with the wind. But there should be room for them to change, if change they must. And “plans of action” are an order of magnitude lower than values and virtues when it comes to things you should remain loyal to.

If, halfway across the ocean, you discover a previously-unknown island paradise, don’t be afraid to stay there just because you said you’d sail across the ocean. That was a noble plan, with all the information you had at the time. But each new piece of knowledge resets your universe to starting right now, this second. There are new choices to be made. Not all of them will be different choices, and your virtues and values and beliefs will help you sort through which is which. But only a fool would put on blinders and say “yes, that island is probably exactly where I’d like to be if I’d known about it when I set out; but I didn’t, so on I shall sail.”

The bright white light of the past splits into an infinity of possible colors in the future only through the prism of your present choices. Only you, in this moment, are capable of choice. You are not beholden to choices made even five minutes ago if you learn something new in between. Hold great ambition in your heart – yes. Make good plans in your mind – yes again. And if nothing prevents you, follow through – unless you think of a choice that’s even better.

It’s amazing how often we patch things instead of fixing them, even when the fix is available. In fact, often the difference between “patching” and “fixing” is just… removing the old patch.

Imagine you got wounded, and lacking proper medical supplies you did the best you could with a bandana. Now you’re at the hospital with proper medical supplies, and the staff goes to put on some nice, proper bandages… over your makeshift one.

People buy new clothes, but stuff them in the closet with the same worn-out, ill-fitting garments the new clothes were meant to replace in the first place. They adopt a new tech solution for a problem, but don’t delete the hacked-together system they had before, never fully migrating the data over.

It’s realizing your milk has gone bad, so you go out and buy new milk, only to shove it into the fridge in front of the old jug instead of throwing it away.

These people don’t lack for solutions. But they patch. And an old patch is a lousy foundation for a new solution. When you’re truly fixing something, fix it – gut the bad solutions out first.

There is a large gap between “engaging with something” and “sealing the final version in amber.”

Allowing an idea to be considered isn’t the same as restructuring your whole ideology. Researching a different career path isn’t the same thing as quitting your job and taking an offer in a new role. Attending an open house isn’t the same thing as buying a house.

And yet, people hesitate so much about the initial engagement process. They spend far too much time trying to decide what to even engage with, as if that decision had meaning or weight.

Largely, it does not. But it does take time! Time is a precious resource when you’re searching for information. Save your deliberation for the time when you have information, and you need to make an actual committed decision. That’s the time. When you’re in the info stage, just engage with the first thing that you see or think of and go from there.

When I write blog posts, sometimes I get into this trap where I’ll deliberate too much about what to write, or what topic to consider. That’s foolhardy! I can write whatever I want, change it, edit it, scrap it, etc. – all before I hit “publish.” So there’s no reason to dwell when the page is blank. I can just type as I like, and then decide if I’ve hit the mark. Only very, very rarely do I decide that I haven’t and write something different. After all, this is a daily blog, so the stone tablets I’m committing to crumble in a day. I will have more opportunities. There will be many “first things” to write about, just as – for all of us – there will be many first things to do.

It’s been quite a year. Despite it all, I had an extremely wonderful Christmas. Look to the few jewels you still have, and polish and treasure them. They are worth it all.

May you believe, tonight, in whatever kind of magic you once believed in. May your heart find that spot, and share it with others. Joy to you, and health, and kindness – and especially wonder.