Moving Forward to 2023

Can you believe it’s almost 2023? I can’t. For those who celebrate Christmas, I hope it was a good one. I know for many here in the U.S. it wasn’t that great because of the frigid weather we had. Lucky for me, I had a nice warm blanket and a few cats to keep me warm.

Now, the New Year is upon us. I often like to take the week between Christmas and New Year to come up with goals for the year. Sometimes I start out strong in January, hoping to make the best of the year, sometimes not. By February, I’ve slacked off. Come March, I wonder where I went wrong.

This year, my life is in total chaos. It started a little over two months ago. Even though I’m a private person, I may write about some of what is going on in my personal life in future posts. Mainly because it might help others. But for now, I’m in a place where I wonder what’s the point in trying to set goals for the coming year when so much is uncertain in my life right now?

Except, reviving this blog and writing a new story has really helped me. It takes my mind off of everything else that is going on, and it has reduced my stress a great deal.

Then I think, I never seem to follow through with the goals I set for the coming year, so what does it matter if I take the time to set some or not? Yet, I realized I needed something to focus on for my own sake.

The late great Ray Bradbury said that if you write every day, it keeps life from poisoning you. That’s not an exact quote, but round about what he said. These past couple of months, I’ve found out what he meant by that.

There have been days I couldn’t write because of doctor appointments for a family member and other responsibilities that have been piled on me recently. For a time, the stress started to consume me to where it was affecting my own health. That is when I got back to the story I was working on, or wrote up a blog post. I didn't want to do those things because of how stressed I was. I didn't know if I could do them because of the stress. But I sat down and tried anyway. My mind became so focused on that, that everything else faded away. The stress levels came down.

So regardless of everything going on in my life, I’ve decided that it might be more important than ever to set those 2023 goals, that I may forget about come February. I can’t let my own life go down the drain because of all the other circumstances I’m enduring right now. Yes, it’s hard, but surprisingly not as hard as I thought it would be.

I have another new story started that I like. I want to make a few design changes to this site. I really should do a better author bio, among other things. I want to blog more often, maybe do a challenge of a blog post a day? But I know in my current situation that might be unreasonable, so maybe twice a week? I’m not sure. But it would be a fun challenge to help keep me sane.

The point is, I need a North Star to keep me from losing myself in all the other life stuff happening to me right now. No one knows what the future will bring. I honestly think that’s for the best. But we can point ourselves in a direction at the very least. There will be detours along the way that will cause us to change course often. In the end, it’s never about the destination as much as the journey to get there.

So I guess I’ll be making those 2023 goals after all.