10 Weeks of Winter

Too many choices…

I’m contemplating the new year. Not just to answer questions people ask about New Years resolutions. Not just because this is the time people do that sort of thing. I’ve been thinking about what I could do next year for a while, and, beyond that, I’ve been thinking about the next five to ten years and what I might like to do. It’s in what I might like to do that I find the challenge – there are too many things I’d like to do. I’ve always struggled with choosing. How do people pick one direction over another when both are good options? Usually I try to avoid choosing and opt to try to do multiple things, and fail of course. It’s not a real option to try to fit it all in. This is what I’m doing currently with my hobbies and goals. I have goals to maintain a fitness routine, write daily, and learn guitar. Each of these goals requires an hour at a minimum per day. I’ve prioritized the writing, so it gets done. Next I attend to fitness, and it usually gets at least partially addressed. And at the last I’ve placed guitar, which isn’t happening. I go to the lessons I paid for only to confess that I haven’t practiced.

Fitting it all in…

In the practical world there’s the day-to-day of life. I work, I have personal chores, appointments, and errands, I have friends and family relationships, and I have pets. Between my regular life and sleep, I probably only have about three to five hours per day when I can fit in my goals, hobbies, and interests. That’s barely any time at all. Before starting this blog I was inclined to avoid my goals altogether out of a feeling of overwhelm and exhaustion. Instead of working on my goals or hobbies I played computer games, which, to be fair, is a sort of hobby. With my 10 Weeks of Winter project I seem to have succeeded in reducing some screentime and have focused on writing instead of gaming. While this is a positive development, it doesn’t help me when thinking about the year ahead and what I should choose to focus on and try to fit into my life.

I do not have the answers to this question of how to choose. My best guess is that it doesn’t matter what you choose, rather it only matters that you choose. Meaning, choosing something will at least take you somewhere, and staying in a pre-choosing state because it’s difficult to make the decision means staying stuck. I think I have to move forward using this approach toward planning for the year ahead and beyond. I need to choose a direction and not dwell on whether or not it’s the best choice or the right choice. And I need to decide what I can practically focus on, and what I need to set aside for another time. It’s that, or try to find ways to squeeze more out of the day.

Past informing present…

The internet offers little of use when trying to set direction for your life. The recommendations online are trite: align with your values, trust your instincts, find your strengths, etc. I have gone through these kinds of exercises so many times to no benefit whatsoever. When I search myself for choices that led me in directions that have been good for me I remember the following qualities:

• A Sense of Adventure – the best things I’ve done in life usually came with excitement and fear. They filled me with a desire to experience or achieve something, ambition, curiosity, and sometimes wonder. Adventurous endeavors always involve some risk. It’s part of the package. And there are moments of fear and hesitation, but I think that the fear can be a helpful signal of a right direction as long as there is also excitement coupled with it.
• An Obsession or Fixation on Doing or Solving Something – obsession and fixation are words reserved for unhealthy behavior, but I think they can provide useful cues about when something holds value for you or when you really care about something. I found myself obsessively thinking about deserts for a long time and finally completely redesigned my bathroom with a desert theme. It is now my favorite room! I love being in there, and it has inspired me to make changes in other rooms to make them more functional and attractive. The desert obsession built its own momentum, and I could just ride into the actions I needed to take for the room redesign. This quality of a good direction could be reframed as dreaming or fantasizing, but I think those words are a bit too passive when seeking direction. Consider what you are fixated on or obsessed with to guide your next steps.
• A Capacity for Devotion – when I was able to finally decide and achieve useful, worthwhile, or wonderful things in my life, they usually came with a quality of devotion. That is, I could think about the thing I needed to do and decide that it was more important than other things I wanted, or even needed, to do. I was devoted to the actions, the processes, the goal, etc. It was what I could choose and would choose over anything else. When I ran regularly my desire for a good run on a light stomach was more important to me than eating as much as I wanted. When it’s a ski day it’s more important to me to wake up really early and get up the mountain than it is to stay in sweet sweet slumber. When I’m devoted I can choose to do what I’m devoted to over other things.

These qualities of desire, longing, preference, and passion have been the essential keys in the most important and formative choices in my life. For setting direction for 2026 and onwards to 2036 I’ll be searching myself for what is giving me a sense of a adventure, what am I obsessed with or fixated on, and what would I choose over everything else – what am I devoted to? I’ll be asking these questions without judgement. Sometimes it turns out that what we would choose over other things is maybe not socially appropriate, or what we’re fixated on is embarrassing, or what gives us a sense of adventure frightens us or other people. That doesn’t matter, at least not for this exercise. All that matters is to answer truthfully, and to see what surfaces without worrying about the roadmap or our fellow travelers in life. For now, I’m just reading the compass, I’m looking for direction so that I can make choices. Once the choices are made the rest will fall into place or I will be in the position to set aside that which does not fit with what has been chosen.