2015: Year of Creativity

I’ve never done new year resolutions, but in the twilight of 2012 I decided instead to have a theme for coming year. That year I chose Ambition, feeling I’d rested on my laurels a bit too much in 2012. And it worked out fairly well for me and indeed ambitions things happened in 2013, especially on the work front but elsewhere as well and by the end of it I was a bit frazzled.

2014 was to be a year of consolidation and indeed many things were consolidated and as this year draws to a close I feel fairly peaceful but there is a bit of dullness in the air that needs addressing with a new theme.

And so for 2015 it will be a year of creativity for me. I will expand some horizons, experiment with new ideas, and try to create some things that could do the same for others. Part of that will be writing more and engaging in the old social media stream, a place I’ve been absent  from for a while now.

Thinking about themes

A year has many parts and life many aspects and I feel like a guiding theme is flexible enough to be applied no matter what may come as where resolutions can be the victim of circumstance. The theme is something like a lense through which you can both reflect on what is happening, and focus decision making.

Each time you need to make a decision you think: “how does each choice match with my theme?” Follow the choice that fits the theme and slowly but surely your life will take a direction that feels consistent with your theme. It has a very holistic feeling to it. A resolution could change your life or it could be a minor deviation from it. A theme will have subtle effects but over the course of a year subtle changes have a way of building up into something significant.

Resolutions are hard and fast and when you fail they lie broken. A theme is flexible and while perhaps you might deviate here or there it is never broken or failed and each moment it can be picked up and carried forward further. It also has no real limits; you can always do more and take it further than the day before.

At the end of the year your life will have changed at least a little in the direction you chose and you can come to evaluate what new directions you would like to chart and build upon those of the year earlier.