Another Year
Cue the Animals as Leaders song of the same name.
This time will be different
Just like everyone else I say the exact same thing each year. The odd thing is that it winds up being true, but usually only a small degree of change.
This past year was really insightful for me after:
- I committed to studying Korean every single day (except one)
- I exercised every single day after being sedentary for a couple years
- I worked on music every single day
Every single day. I thought for sure I'd stop at some point, but I realized that when I control the rules I don't care to quit.
I've made some good progress
Even though I've done all of these things daily, which was quite a bit, I know I'm capable of more or at least taking them up a notch.
Exercise isn't really much of an issue, but with music and studying I've had a trajectory problem in disguise. Looking through another lens it was more like a long-term attention problem.
Work on an idea, get 60% done in a couple days, move to the next idea. Study a grammar concept, commit it to memory for a few days, move to the next and never practice what you learned.
Part of me thought I didn't know what I wanted for myself based on how I was working. In hindsight I knew exactly what I wanted in the moment, however long, and began to chase the next thing without tying loose ends first.
There's a common saying from self-help books about how saying no to something gives the potential to say yes to other things. The converse is obviously true too; constantly saying yes to something new means saying no to something you've already started working on.
Here's to another year
Maybe 2025 was about laying the foundation of good habits, and 2026 will be about developing solid focus and strong paths for me to follow.
The cool thing is I've defined my tool set already which took me a whole year. That doesn't need to be changed anymore.
I can definitely say I've come up with some really cool methodologies for creating that have defied some of my past beliefs about the creative process (without AI of course, in case that was ever in question). They've also make me curious enough to understand why they work and how my brain reacts to them in the moment.
Gonna enjoy this last few days before I ramp things up even more.