This post has been on my to-do list for the last few months. Each week that passed was another dose of embarrassment for being away from writing for so long. The new year is upon us, and of course that puts pressure to put the previous year’s mistakes behind us and start anew.
On Foundation
As prior readers know, last year began my attempt to apply the concepts of a yearly theme, as opposed to new years resolutions. I came upon the idea of foundation, envisioning the process of developing a good base of operation in my life when it comes to my health, habits, and relationships.
The first half of the year started off great. I was consistently writing, working out, and trying out a wide range of trials. August hit, and then I missed a week. Beginning a trial on logging workouts, I drafted up a post with little to say and little excitement about the topic. Not every post needs to be fueled by passion, but it felt like a slog. I thought to myself, stepping back for a week to formulate my thoughts would be best, and here we are five months later with those thoughts still not formed.
In that time, I took an unexpected turn. Not only did I stop writing, I stopped a lot of tasks I found to be part of the foundation I’d been building, including tracking my habits daily, having a consistent sleep schedule, and even my weekly reviews.
The time wasn’t spent completely idle though. I went on a number of trips with friends, started a consistent workout schedule, and even took my rock climbing to the next level. While it’s not the foundation I anticipated at the beginning of the year, I found myself in a good place despite the drastic change.
On Writing
For the last few years, I’ve been writing on and off for this blog and don’t plan on completely stopping anytime soon. However, I don’t know that I’ll always be going about things through the trial approach. Those posts give me a jumping off point of a topic to discuss, but I’ve often found myself with little to say about a trial, especially not much to say over the course of four weeks.
Over the years, I’ve tried to create a structure to these posts relating all of them to the trial at hand. I’ve always circled back the structure of an introduction, brief progress reports, and a conclusion on if I plan to continue the new aspect in some shape or form.
Something that has fluctuated has been my day for publishing. This I do plan on changing once again, as I don’t plan on committing to posting weekly. Instead, this year I want to focus on writing posts with a particular goal or question to answer, rather than a weekly commitment. These might be thoughts on trials, as I still plan to sprinkle them in, but the primary driver of topics will be ideas that arise from various sources. These could be from books I’m reading, media I’m watching or even a walk in the neighborhood.
Stay tuned for a more extensive post covering for my 2023 theme. For now I’ll give you the theme name: “Intention.”
Trying Out Before Buying In 