Somewhere in the midst of the past couple of days, the last digit on my calendar changed from a "2" to a "3". I suppose that means we're in a new year. Thanks to being a father with a nine-month-old who likes to rise and shine at 7:00 every morning, that means that I went to sleep in one year and woke up seven hours into the next -- no staying up until midnight this time around.
For some reason, this whole changing of a calendar causes most of humanity (or at least that part of it that pays any attention to this particular calendar -- we won't talk about the Mayans right now) to re-evaluate their lives for the preceding twelve months, and to make plans -- both grandiose and mundane -- for the next twelve.
I've never understood the power that one digit on the calendar has to cause this change, but I'm all in favor of both reviewing what has gone right and wrong in the past, and setting goals for the future.
For me, it was a really great year. It saw the birth of my son (and let's face it, nothing else that happened the entire year has a chance of topping that). I conducted my first two handbell festivals, as well as got asked to conduct three more in 2013 (more on those later). I taught two classes at the Handbell Musicians of America National Seminar (which I took as a sort of validation that I do, in fact, have some idea what I'm talking about when it comes to things composing and creative). I got many more pieces published, and made relationships with several new publishers.
Of course, there are things I would change about the year, as well. I'd love to focus more time on my composing. I'd love to find some time to work on my writing again -- the current draft of the third Sadonia book is sitting with my main characters around a table talking, as they've been doing now for about seven months.
It seems only natural that, in any New Year, we'd want more of the good and less of the bad, and so that's where the goals and plans come in. I will say that what I have here are NOT proper goals -- a good, proper goal has a specific, quantifiable outcome (or some other measure by which you can tell if it worked or not), and a definite time frame. These are more vague goals that I hope to make more concrete after a bit of thinking and soul searching.
Some of them aren't even goals, rather plans of things to do or not do in the coming months. The first one, I'm afraid, applies directly to The Creative. For months, I've been attempting to keep up a schedule of creativity-related posts once a week, as well as a Saturday Summary every week, detailing what I've done in the previous seven days.
I'm stopping all of it.
For starters, the Saturday Summaries were even starting to bore me, and they're about my life. I can't see as how anyone cares in that specific of detail what I'm doing on a weekly basis. I may pare those back to Monthly Summaries, or even "Whenever Jason Feels Like It" Summaries. I still love sharing my successes and failures, my trials and struggles with anyone who cares to read, on the hopes that hearing about how I'm dealing with it will help you in your own Creative journeys ... but weekly is just too much.
I'm also ending regular Wednesday posts. It's taking up more of my time than I want to write the posts, and I'm struggling for ideas to talk about week in and week out. Even when I take a month off -- like I did pretty much all December -- I come back in January and this is the best I can give you. I still enjoy talking about creativity, and I enjoy helping get others excited about creating the lives they want, but to be fair to myself, I have to create the life I envision for myself, and sadly, right now, that involves less time blogging and more time composing, writing, and spending time with my family. I'll still post, but it will be a far more sporadic thing.
Now, for the "goals." For starters, I'd love to finish at least the current draft of the third Sadonia book this year, if not the whole thing. That takes an inordinate amount of time -- writing, rewriting, editing, rewriting, re-editing, finalizing ... not to mention formatting for publication, getting cover art, etc. I'd be happy getting just the draft done, but I also know that if I don't keep pushing myself to get these things written, they'll never get done. I know they won't ever be great masterworks of literature, but they're a story I feel driven to tell, so I'd love to make sure I get the thing told before I die. At the rate I'm going now, I can't guarantee that will happen, no matter my life expectancy.
Naturally, I'd also love to do more composing. I won't go so far as to make this an official "Year of Insanity" goal, but I'd love to hit about 50 pieces finished before the end of the year. Just looking at what I've currently got on my plate and what I've promised various publishers and people who have commissioned me, that ought to account for at least a good 20 of the pieces. I also think I have enough on my plate right now with writing for handbells, strings, and piano that I probably won't try to venture much outside those realms, or at least not make doing so an official part of my goal. I think I stand a chance of hitting 50, especially since we're in day 2 of the year and I already finished one piece ... though since nearly all of it was written in 2012, I'm not sure I can really count that. Still, I think 50 is a doable quantity.
So that's where we're at. I invite all of you to take a moment today, tomorrow, or this weekend, and evaluate how your life (both creative and otherwise) went last year, think about what went well and what you'd like to improve, then formulate some sort of plan to help you get to where you'd like to go. It's well worth the effort, and in the end, you'll thank yourself.
I wish you all the very best in 2013, and now that the Fiscal Cliff has been averted, the year can only get better, mainly since we're hopefully done hearing the term "Fiscal Cliff" for a while. Until next time....
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