It’s a new year, and I feel all the magnetic pulls toward newer, smarter, wiser, shinier, hotter, all-around healthier versions of myself. Sometimes I’m successful at setting goals for a new year and following through on them. My lofty “Year of Flights” of 2018 comes to mind, in which I set out to board a plane every month of the year. And I did.
But then other years I haven’t followed through — most notably, my doomed YouTube video to kick off 2021, in which I envisioned writing my first song via guitar, learning Polish, juggling, and doing a handstand. I still haven’t returned to that video with a concession on how miserably I failed all those goals that year.
Oh, the shame.
I don’t make videos as much any more, and I’ve often wondered if that failure has anything to do with it. I’ve actually thought a lot about that video the last three years, wondering why I didn’t succeed with my intentions. I think they were good, specific and measurable, and I practiced something like accountability by speaking them out, creating a sense of expectation beyond myself.
I’d done the same thing with my Year of Flights to kick off 2018: a measurable goal, clearly announced to my newsletter subscribers and social media followers — that this would be my life for the next twelve months, and so it was.
I don’t know what was more magical: seeing those twelve lovely places or the setting of a bold intention as I followed through on it.
Sometimes we speak things out, and they become true. Like we’re wizards spinning magic into this world; our wands as our pens and mouths, created by a Creator with the same capacity to write and speak and do. Create.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
– Genesis 1:3 (ESV)
And then other times we declare bold things for our stories that do not come true. These goals, these new stories, these fuller versions of ourselves — well, they don’t form as we hoped, if even they form at all.
Looking back on the last few years, I don’t understand why I could board twelve planes in twelve months — a solid dent into my budget that year — but not learn to juggle. How much of a time investment would the latter have required? Five minutes a day for three hundred days? A hundred days, maybe less? Far less of a cost than the financial investment of twelve flights.
Last January, I kicked off 2023 with the ambitious dream to re-release Struggle Central for its 10-year anniversary come April. Initially, I felt amazing about setting that intention — but a solid stretch in February left me unsure if I’d actually follow through. Relearning how to format headers and footers and page sizes for not one, not two, but three different versions of a book proved a literal headache.
Oh, and there was also the matter of writing a new afterword that felt relevant, along with recording this new section for audiobook. Another task, another headache altogether.
Setting that intention in January was lovely. I’d been thinking about it for two or three years leading up to that 10-year anniversary year.
But following through? Would all the work required — with only a couple months to do it — be worth it?
I languished.
After an apathetic February, though, something happened in March. This thought arrested me:
I decided I couldn’t not rewrite this book. Because I knew I’d look back on my 2023 with piercing regret: a 10-year anniversary window only ever opens once.
The pain of that future regret was greater than the present pains of writing and reformatting (and rewriting and rewriting).
So, I got started one day in March. I started writing, reformatting, and rewriting. I felt like I was back in college for a couple months, staying up late that final week, like completing a research paper the morning it’s due.
Life sucked for several weeks in March and April. I doubted myself and wondered if anyone else even cared if I wrote this book again.
But I also felt more purpose than I’d felt in years. I cared about something, even if nobody else did. The more time I invested and the closer I approached my deadline, the better my pain felt. Like finding that groove in mile 7 of a half-marathon.
The pain was (eventually) worth it.
I think that’s the secret to following through on any goal or intention, whether you speak it out or keep it to yourself — realizing that the pain is part of it, makes the yet unattained thing what it is: magic waiting to be made. New creation.
Beyond the simple wave of a wand, however, true magic requires a cost. As humans we’re prone to take the path with much less cost. Why suffer the road with potholes when the newly paved one runs parallel to it?
But what if not following through on an intention is actually your road with potholes? What if this road of apathy is actually the one with greater longterm cost?
If I look back on my failed intentions of 2021, the pain of not learning to juggle was apparently not greater than the pain of investing five minutes a day to the task. Same with the handstands and the Polish and the songwriting.
Like, yeah, it would have been really nice to accomplish all those things that year.
But really nice doesn’t cut it.
I was never pained that I couldn’t, pained that I didn’t.
Therein lies the secret to new creation, be it books or songs or David-esque sculpted bodies.
What will be the cost of creating this new thing? And what will be the cost if I don’t?
Because there’s a cost to both: the cost of doing something and the cost of not. We only have so much time, energy, and money. How will we use — and not use — our finite resources?
As I’ve started mapping out my 2024, I’ve flipped to the back page of my agenda, the one opposite December, to write down what I want my life to look like across several arenas at that juncture: physical, relational, spiritual, financial, and travel goals among them.
They’re written down. They’re spoken out. Step one is accomplished.
But now for the cost assessment: what will be required of me to spin this new magic into my life?
Because unless I count the cost of both the doing and the not doing, I doubt I’ll accomplish many of them. My life will look very similar a year from now.
Quite frankly, it needs to hurt later if I don’t take some uncomfortable steps now.
I need to feel the stab of not having upped my gym attendance from twice a week to thrice a week.
I need to feel the sorrow of not traveling outside America for the first time since that fabled Year of Flights six years ago.
I need to feel the sting of stifling those whispers in my soul, as if they were the caring calls of a friend — call him Holy Spirit or Future Tom — being sent to voicemail, again and again.
Some of the whispers may sound silly to anyone reading. My life will certainly go on if I “only” go to the gym twice a week, all year long. Or if I don’t escape America during an election year.
But I know I’m capable of more. I know international travel enriches my mind, expands my appreciations for diversity and creativity. I know pushing my body also strengthens my mind, which also improves my capacity for emotions and relationships.
So do I, or don’t I, want these greater expansions in 2024?
Absolutely, I do.
Okay.
Well.
There’s a cost.
When will I go to the gym a third time a week? I already go on Monday and Wednesday evenings. But my gym isn’t open any other time I’m currently free — except Friday and Saturday mornings.
Morning workouts?? But . . . I prefer evenings.
Alas. Either I change my schedule, or I wake up early to work out one additional day a week.
When will I flee America this year, and how much will that trip cost? How much will I have to DoorDash that month to compensate for the flight, the public transport, the food, the lodging, and any recreational exploits I get myself into?
It would be easier, for now, to stick with my twice-weekly gym sessions and not travel outside America this year.
But if I push through these complications, this here-and-now discomfort, I believe these investments into me will pay off this year. And beyond. As will the twenty other intentions I’ve set for the year ahead.
I’m in my mid-thirties now, and I know it’s easy to feel the shine of a new year only to lose focus of the luster within a few months or weeks. It’s still early into 2024, and I’ve already made solid progress on my intentions for this year.
I know the discomfort, even the pain, is coming. But still the whispers persist. I want to continue counting the cost and heeding those holy whispers all year long.
And when I reach that December page of my agenda, I want to look back on my 2024 with a new appreciation for this one life I’ve been given.
That I counted the cost to create anew, and that this cost of new creation was so, so worth it.
I’d love to learn what sort of things you hope to create in your life and in the universe this year. Care to share below?
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