The new year is here. Time to resolve.
My resolution for 2019 is a simple one: to honour my thoughts.
The idea behind this year’s resolution came to me on Christmas morning. I was in my office listening to a podcast and doing some desktop cleanup. A thought crossed my mind about something different and potentially interesting that I could write about. ‘Oh! I should make a note of that,’ I said to myself. However, I put it off, got distracted and let the thought slide. Only later did I remember that there was something I had wanted to note but sadly I had forgotten what that was.
This sort of slip up happens to me all the time. I’ve dealt with my short attention span since I was a kid, but with the continual creep of ‘always-on’ staring-at-screens multitasking, staying focused is tougher for me than ever before.
I don’t know if my lost Christmas morning thought was an especially novel one. It probably wasn’t any sort of game changer or eureka moment. But, odds are it was worth exploring and could have potentially led, in some way, to me being more successful as a writer. The thing that kills me is that I don’t know. I have no way to evaluate something that ‘came to me’. I left it to fade. I didn’t honour my own creation or allow myself to explore a freebie presented to me by my very own one-of-a-kind brain.
Folks talk about FOMO (the fear of missing out) and how social media and digital culture drive people to worry too much about not making the most of their lives and to compare harshly their lives to others solely on what someone selectively shares online.
I seem to be suffering from other effect of contemporary living, introspection FOMO: the fear of missing out on my own internal life and having no idea if I’m making the most of what my grey matter has to offer.
To address these concerns and honour my thoughts, I’m going to try really hard to stop whatever I doing whenever an idea ‘hits’ and jot down a note. Later I will take the time to flesh the idea out to see if how it it’s worthwhile and applies to my work. It’s that simple. Be more in the moment, more aware of my now thoughts, more in tune with what’s flowing through me, more interactive with myself as a writer and thinker.
2018 Resolved?
I had three 2018 resolutions:
- Work more on my tikichris Talks podcast, take on other podcasting projects, and make podcasting a bigger priority.- CHECK! Although there is still plenty for me to improve and achieve, I’ve been surprised how much I’ve taken to podcasting. Improvements seem to be more about tweaking and learning from honest mistakes. I also didn’t realise how much I would enjoy podcasting. It’s been less time consuming than I had feared as well. I’m eager to carry on regularly posting episodes and seeking inspiring people to interview for those episodes.Want to pitch in or think you’d make a great interviewee? Get in touch.
- Rely more on my small but keen pool of contributors to help broaden the appeal and scope of tikichris.com.- CHECK! tikichris.com has more contributors now than at the beginning of 2018. I am so appreciative of how they all filled in to keep the blog rolling as my schedule and commitments had be bouncing all over the place as well as how a few of those contributors really took the initiative to come up with their own miniseries, pitching fantastic ideas to me and go for it in ways that made the blog more interesting to read and while teaching me a thing or two about what constitutes good content.Would you like to contribute to this blog? If you’ve got enthusiasm and some skill, I’ll make a space for you.
- Take my blog’s competitions and giveaways to a new level with bigger prizes and even more engaging ways to play.- CHECK (but to a limited degree). I did fewer but bigger comps with better prizes over the past year. I saw higher traffic and deeper engagement with subscribers and followers because of this. However, I failed to go as big as I had planned and am still sitting on a few ideas that I’m not sure when I’ll be able to start working on.
Watch this space, and let me know if you’re hankering to play or have thought about how to make tikichris competitions and giveaways more fun.
And You?
How about you? What are your resolutions for 2019? How did you do with your goals for 2018? I’d love it if you shared your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Happy New Year,
Chris
