Over the last several days, my Facebook feed has been filled with ads for diet plans, exercise apps, and opportunities to ring in the new year.  I’m sure that there are many people out there who are excited by the looming date change on the calendar, but what really changes between 11:59pm on December 31, 2023 and 12:00am on January 1, 2024 aside from the date itself, something that happens with every single twenty-four hour period?  Lots of people use this change of the calendar to commit to resolutions, presumably to make their lives better, though statistics say that most people give up on new year’s resolutions within the first four months of the year.  That leaves eight months for people to feel like they have failed.  What kind of life is that?

I don’t make new year’s resolutions.  Each year I do decide on a word or phrase around which to make my life more intentional in the coming months.  This year it is “LIVE A GREAT STORY.”  You might be wondering what that looks like.  I’m wondering the same thing.  I may not know what it looks like, but I do have a good sense of what it doesn’t look like.  It doesn’t look like a rigid diet…because some days a great story might involve sharing pizza or a cookie, or ice cream with friends.  Other days that great story’s plot may center around a big salad made from produce grown in my backyard or purchased at the local farmers market.  Then there are days during the year where that great story is about fasting.  I want to be free to live my story as it unfolds, not control it such that there is not room for character devleopment and plot twists.

My great story also is not about hardcore fitness goals.  I love to run, but some days I don’t.  On those days I prefer a slow walk that affords me the opportunity to be present to all that is around me–the smells, the sounds, the people, my thoughts–rather than being hyper-focused on my pace and my heart rate.  I suspect that some chapters in my story will also be about the girl who had a lazy day, who said “screw it” to those exercise rings on her Apple watch and immersed herself in someone else’s words, making their story part of her own.

I don’t have a crystal ball.  I don’t know what 2024 will bring.  Heck, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  What I do know is that for me, living a great story means living fully in the present, practicing gratitude daily, and being the best I can in the moment.  Getting to this place has taken work.  Much insight and growth has come from writing daily morning pages, a practice developed by Julia Cameron in her book The Artists’s Way, and from being a lifelong journaler.  Around my birthday, which coicnidentally coincides with the end of the year, I do  journal around some prompts that are both introspective and retrospective.  The ones I used this year are by Tsh Oxenreider.

New Year’s Eve Questions

1. What was the single best thing that happened this past year?
2. What was the single most challenging thing that happened?
3. What was an unexpected joy this past year?
4. What was an unexpected obstacle?
5. Pick three words to describe this past year.
6. Pick three words your spouse or a close friend would use to describe your year.
7. Pick three words your spouse or a close friend would use to describe their past year.
8. What were the best books you read this year?
9. With whom were your most valuable relationships?
10. What was your biggest personal change from January to December of this past year?
11. In what way(s) did you grow emotionally?
12. In what way(s) did you grow spiritually?
13. In what way(s) did you grow physically?
14. In what way(s) did you grow in your relationships with others?
15. What was the most enjoyable part of your work (both professionally and at home)?
16. What was the most challenging part of your work (both professionally and at home)?
17. What was your single biggest time waster in your life this past year?
18. What was the best way you used your time this past year?
19. What was the biggest thing you learned this past year?
20. Create a phrase or statement that describes this past year for you.

Though I don’t know the details of my yet-to-be-written great story, I do know the “why” of it.  The poem I Will Not Die An Unlived Life by Dawna Markova sums it up perfectly.

The poem is a candle that my soul holds out to me, requesting I find a way to remember what it is to live a life with passion, on purpose. There is only enough light to take the journey step by step, but that is all any of us really needs. […]

When you have the courage to shape your life from the essence of who you are, you ignite, becoming truly alive. This requires letting go of everything that is inauthentic. But how can you even know your truth unless you slow down, in your own quiet company? When the inner walls to your soul are graffitied with advertisements, commercials, and the opinions of everyone who has every known and labeled you, turning inwards requires nothing less than a major clean-up.

Traveling from the known to the unknown requires crossing an abyss of emptiness. We first experience disorientation and confusion. Then if we are willing to cross the abyss in curious and playful wonder, we enter an expansive and untamed country that has its own rhythm. Time melts and thoughts become stories, music, poems, images, ideas. This is the intelligence of the heart, but by that I don’t mean just the seat of our emotions. I mean a vast range of receptive and connective abilities, intuition, innovation, wisdom, creativity, sensitivity, the aesthetic, qualitative and meaning making. It is here that we uncover our purpose and passion.

–Dawna Markova, From “I Will Not Die an Unlived Life”

I look forward to living my great story and making each of you a part of it.

May the coming days, weeks, months, and year be what you need them to be.

Welcome 2024.