I’m not really one for making new year’s resolutions. I don’t see the point. If you’re hoping to change your habits, your activities or the whole glorious jumble of your life, why wait until 1 January?
Even so, I can’t help finding the optimism of a new year enticing. There’s that delicious feeling that this is the year you will get it right. You’ll figure it out – the system, the magic, the knack. The trick to keeping everything beautiful and smooth.
It doesn’t matter that you thought the same thing last year, or the year before that, or even (since we’re being honest here) the one before that. Nor is it important that while you’re envisioning a life brimming with grace and ease, you remain entirely aware that it’s not going to work out that way.
Perhaps this brightly shining new year is the one in which you will finally commit to writing that book. Or maybe 2014 will see you complete that project which has absorbed your time and your mind for so long.
If you have a resolute nature and a desire to write, you might try taking Ray Bradbury’s advice. Writing daily and reading fervently are two excellent ways to spend your days or nights in the coming year. And while delightful activities in themselves, they are also highly likely to make you a better writer. Perhaps even a better human being.
Grasp the optimism of the new year and give it a go. Then, as Bradbury says, see what happens.
My own reservations about resolutions do not stop me from making a wish for the year ahead. That wish is to assist you in whatever way I can to find the art in your words and to craft your written expression.
Artful Words is open for business in 2014.
Do you make new year’s resolutions? Care to share? What do you resolve to create this year?