Tuesday, December 31, 2013

The ending of a year: 2013 closes

By the time you read this, it may be 2014. I haven’t a clue when you’ll get around to clearing out your RSS feeds or your blog subscriptions, so you may have rung in the new year, watched 2 days of football, and be back to work, school, or whatever normal means for you.

So, as you’ll find in many corners of the Internet right now, I thought I’d look back at the year 2013 and say a few things about it. Here they are:

  1. The year started.
  2. There were 365 calendar days in it.
  3. The year ended. (Or is ending).

Wait, you wanted deep and thought-provoking?

Ok, here’s the deep part:

You had a great year. You had an awful year. You, over there, felt like the whole year was a waste. You, in the back, thought you were fortunate just to survive the year.

Here’s the deal: we each had 365 days. Some of them were spent in a coma—whether necessary or personally chosen is another story. Some of them were spent on survival. I’ve had years where 360 days were spent on survival. It happens.

Some of those days were spent chasing dreams and having dreams. Some were spent in skill building.

Every one of those days has an impact on your new set of 365 days this year. If you had a bad day and told off your boss, that can have a negative impact. If you had a great day and great things are echoing into 2014, that will have a positive impact.

You will start 2014, though, as the person you became across those 365 days of 2013. Your new set of days can be spent building on the past foundation, rebuilding a good foundation, or simply running from it all.

You, though, get to make a large portion of that decision. True, if you have responsibilities, those must be met. Your choice is to meet them with joy or frustration, not to abandon them.

The rest of it, though?

Make your decision. How do you want the year to go? More marking time? Or moving forward? Make turns as you need to, but get progressing in the right direction, even if just by inches.

After all, there’s always the first drop. Then comes the rain, which makes things grow, brings new life.

That’s a good thing.

So keep the last year in perspective: don’t let it destroy you, but don’t abandon the lessons learned.

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