Typically I save this post for Facebook and publish it on the 31st of December. But with my habit of publishing an article here every Sunday, I wanted to make a more personable post sharing my thoughts here. It’s a sort of new years tradition for me to record my thoughts overall during the past year. How I grew and changed this past year. What are some good things and bad things. All the while dropping some life insights.
Let’s begin.
My “Resolution”
To start, since it’s a new year, I want to be setting the tonne for what 2023 is looking like overall. In my mind, it makes sense to start with a resolution. I put it in air quotes because I know when you think of resolutions, it’s normally a goal that goes by the wayside a handful of days into the new year.
This isn’t the case for me as I structure it as I would with any other goal that I set out to do. Also, this has been a resolution that I started at the start of December anyway rather than waiting for the new year to roll around. That resolution is simple:
I want to be better about organizing my commitments.
The reason I’m going this route is that I have a tendency to procrastinate on tasks. I don’t mention this too much but there were times when I could’ve gotten things done sooner but decided not to. This usually came down to my client’s work. Though to some extent it was also seen in my posts on Medium, where part way through the year, I finally went back to publishing 5-6 articles per week.
I want to be better about particular things and from writing on Medium, I’ve seen some significant results to consistency. If I can commit more to other small things, I might eventually see results in other areas.
The general idea of this resolution isn’t boiled down to a specific habit but a broader scope of things. I don’t just want to be consistent with exercising a certain number of times. I want to ensure I’m ahead on my client work, I have topics to pick for Medium posts, to have time to grow friendships and to have time for myself.
All of that takes consistent effort in all kinds of actions.
My Thoughts: The Good
Looking over 2022, I feel a lot of the results I had were middling at best. It wasn’t everything I wanted to get out of it, but it wasn’t a total disappointment either.
In terms of my business, I started 2022 excited about particular developments that are at this point still being developed and trying to get off the ground. A good example is an online store. Over the past year, we made attempts in various ways: affiliate programs, creating an Etsy store (twice, which required me to finally get my own credit card), and ending up with the path that we’re still in the midst of setting up.
Though the silver lining in all this is that I did get an influx of clients and better quality ones overall. This was the first year I got a client outside of Upwork, and my first big client too. Over the past year, I had a fluctuation of clients as well which didn’t help my financial concerns either.
In terms of my health, I learned a lot about health – from my own family health history, or general problems that I’m dealing with now. That said, my activeness has been all over the place as I find myself going to the gym for a few months before taking weeks or several months away from the gym due to work piling up.
Overall the good part about all of this is that I consider a lot of this to be framework material. What I mean by that is that it’s not necessarily impactful in terms of direct assistance in specific areas. However, it does set you up for future development.
In business, my team and I have made attempts in certain areas and have gained experience and knowledge over what will work and what doesn’t and how we can set everything up in the future. For my health, I have put together a better strategy for how to handle my nutrition better now and in the future.
The only thing that is lacking is more on the committing to action part which as I said, is my resolution for this year and I’ve already got a system for that.
Beyond these aspects of my life, I’m also pretty happy about other developments that I haven’t mentioned. For example:
- I’ve spent a lot of time this year listening to American comedians and progressive political personalities on Youtube. This has provided a lot of context about politics in America, but has also sparked some interest into Canadian politics too. I can’t see myself running for a political office, but I believe it’s crucial that we begin talking about political issues more and about politics. The more we understand and discuss and share ideas, the better informed we become with making political decisions that impact all of us.
- Due to my consistent research into various things tying to self-improvement, I feel last year was the first time I really created my own sense of what self-improvement is in my mind. I see it as the sort of building blocks for how I want to go about certain things I’ll be doing with my business now and moving forward.
My Thoughts: The Bad
In terms of what could’ve been better this year, I’ve already hinted above what could be better. I’m of the mind that we’re in some dark times. Climate change is happening around us and people are still brushing it off. There is a lot of political turmoil – especially in our country neighbours, the US -and that creates a lot of doom and gloom.
Then there are rich billionaires throwing money around and not caring about the consequences of their actions.
Even though there is little to be done about these issues individually, it still affects us all collectively. Billionaires for example are due to the failures of various systems and people who simply allowed people to exploit workers and pay little tax for years.
There are many systemic problems and we’re seeing a lot of them crumbling down little by little due to neglect and the same messaging. My parents and I were discussing the idea of revamping the train system which would in turn remove long-haul trucking entirely. That system is going to require millions because of decades of neglect.
On more personal notes, I’ve made a point to not be too involved in these situations, but it does help me to expand my world view and understand other problems happening in the world right now. It feels like things are falling apart, but it’s all the more reason to keep putting in effort to build them back up. And more importantly to figure out how we as individuals can fit into the picture as being part of the solution.
Overall Thoughts
This past year has been chaotic in several ways but it feels like things are at a tipping point. Even though there are major problems – whether it’s war, climate change, or just our own personal challenges – humanity has been showing some push back and progression. It’s not as much as what is needed, but it’s still better than keeping the status quo.
This year is a year for major changes and as long as we make a continued effort to make things happen and to stay true to what we believe in and want, I think we can make 2023 a great year.
To your growth!
Eric S Burdon