Whenever I write, I add my word count into a spreadsheet. Across any given year, those small numbers add to an annual running total, and as the days go by, I delight at watching mini writing sessions build to something. Currently, I have written 47,227 words this year. That’s no small feat, but if I contrast this to the year prior, the impact of that total nosedives. In 2023, I had written a total of 58,446 words. That’s a difference of 11,219. If we’re just looking at cold, numerical data year-over-year, my 2024 creative output is a 20.9% decline from 2023’s output.
But here’s the problem with that data…
…it accounts for one infinitesimally tiny fraction of the past 12 months. The rest of 2024 was filled with memories made with family and friends. It included another trip across the ocean, holidays, birthdays, more podcast interviews, a wedding for one of my best friends, time spent learning new recipes, books read, sleepy Sundays at home, movies watched, and so much more.
It’s easy to see one datapoint and get hung up on how much I wrote (or didn’t) this past year compared to the year before. As part of a society and culture perpetually on the go, it’s a breeze to fixate on what we’re not doing, instead of stepping back and taking in the whole picture.
It’s not entirely our fault. At every turn, we’re inundated with advertisements trying to sell us a better life. Whether we’re catching up on a favorite show and have to sit through a commercial break or are simply fueling up the car at the gas pump, advertisements, like air, are all around us. From decorative billboards to annoying pop-ups, there’s no escaping the temptation of “more.”
More is an idea with no end. It’s both an incredible motivator to drive us forward and a painful adversary when it’s out of reach. People have accomplished great feats in pursuit of more. Alternatively, more has led to many nights of isolation, sadness, and distress. It’s a hard idea to temper and an even more difficult tool to wield effectively, and what starts as an inspiring step forward can descend into an ever-narrowing tunnel of despair.
And the reality is, we don’t know what skills or tools we’ll need to harness the power of more. It could be something new, or it could have been something we learned years prior. The path to acquiring or building “more” is rarely clear, and success often feels like the seemingly random convergence of skills, networking, knowledge, and right place / right time.
I had a writing job this year for something nerdy and cool that fell into my lap, but it required knowledge of a video game I hadn’t thought about or played since I was about 15 years old. This was not advertised when I took the assignment, and I only found out after I had already started working on it. Fortunately, I was still able to tap into those memories and wield that knowledge some 20+ years later. In a similar fashion, a promotion at work a few months ago leaned heavily on skills I had been coincidentally developing in my free time (for fun). None of this was planned, nor had I considered that these activities I engaged in would ever circle back to being useful in another aspect of life, in a separate pursuit of “more.”
And that’s my point.
At the beginning of 2024, I wrote a newsletter about how “you’re already doing it.” It dealt with the guilt and imposter syndrome we all feel from time to time. It spoke to the shadow of not producing or doing “more” that hangs around us sometimes, waiting for us to invite it in. That guilt is a vampire, and if we let it in, it’ll drain our spirit, creativity, and ability to bring good to the world.
That dream you’re chasing? You may not have created as much this year as the year previously, but so what? You still did something, right? A few more hours away from the writing desk or canvas because you spent more time connecting with a person or watching a movie that deeply moved you isn’t stolen time from your art or craft. It could be networking or knowledge that will someday pay off at one of those convergences of the right time / right place. There’s truly no way of knowing, and the path ahead is never clear.
As 2024 comes to a close, many of us are thinking about our next steps in the coming year. Deadlines, goals, timelines, and making space for our interests and hobbies matter, but above all else, so does the right frame of mind. It’s easy to miss a goal and dwell on what could have been. Whereas the future is uncertain, the past is always clear. When we let those failures or missed steps rack up, eventually they’ll weigh us down, and we’ll lose momentum.
Like those advertisements that follow us wherever we go, everything we need to make this next year a success is already all around us, waiting in the winds for us to discover it. We just need to stay open to it and look ahead to opportunities instead of fixating on less-than-ideal data that in no way paints the whole portrait of our lives.
To quote something nerdy and cool that is tangentially related to that writing job I mentioned earlier, “your focus determines your reality.”
This coming year, I wish you all the best in life and in your creative endeavors. Your voice matters, and your work makes this world a better place. Keep making your art, keep sharing meals with family and friends, and keep exploring.
We’re all in this together,
Scott
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I have enjoyed everyone of Scott’s writings. They are positive and uplifting.