Resolutions In A Broken Year

It’s that wonderful time of the year again.  The turn of the year is my time to sit and reflect upon the previous year, set goals for the new year, and of course, purge my social media of all the people whose timelines do not contribute productively to society.  

Now, I want to scream every time someone says this phrase, but yes, this year has been different.  And the process I face at the end of this year is different because of it.  I took one look at last year’s goals and decided to pass on recording how I did.  And my annual social media culling promises to be very exciting.

When it comes to setting goals for the next year, I find myself facing even more pause.  In fact, if I’m being completely honest, when I first thought about it, it felt wrong to prepare New Year’s resolutions.  

Let’s face it, this year has been a difficult and taxing season, a stupid and needless tragedy.  What began for me as a firm and successful commitment to keep my life moving even as the world came to a sudden stop has evolved into a numb, brooding resignation.  I’ve tried to write about what’s around me, to lend my voice to a revolution that needs to happen, but I’ve never felt that I could do any more than add a decibel to all the wicked noise.  Yet, the longer I wait, the more my thoughts eat at me, and the more I think about just trashing the resolutions for this year, the more I balk at my own passivity.  

So here I am, writing once again.  Maybe all this will do is add to the noise.  I cannot know for sure or be concerned with finding out.  I have to speak.  I have to write.  If not for a blog and what faithful remnant of old readers is finding this then for myself.

All this to say that I am indeed setting bold goals for myself in 2021.  The intense year we have faced requires an intense answer.  I’m disoriented after the past 10 months, I must admit.  Among my goals for the new year is the use of this blog to reorient and express myself.  There are things I have wanted to say, topics I have wanted to address, and I am going to use this platform to address them.  With that being said, let me use the rest of this post to look ahead.  

This month is dedicated to a series I am calling “Hot Take.”  So many things are on my mind after this year, and I am going to share my thoughts after 10 months of reflecting on current events.  Next week, I am going to share more about my outlook for 2021 and establish the lens with which I will be looking at everything else. The journey will go from there.  

This is an open invitation.