Week two and I’m already floundering a bit on my new blogging schedule. Time to re-group, relax that starting goal a bit. Going from two posts in the whole of December to three days a week in January was a bit ambitious. A lot ambitious.

In thinking about this, it occurs to me that I never shared my longer explanation of how much I loved Stratejoy’s Holiday Council, as this goal was partially a product of that. I mentioned only in passing, once here, and a couple times on Twitter, that this is a thing that I did. I know most of you are sick and tired of hearing everyone talk about resolutions and some of you particularly cynical, bitter souls think I’m a major league asshole for doing this to you now that we are already double-digit days into the year.

Putting to bed a lot of cynical, unproductive ideas is a big part of what I’m up to right now, and I owe some of that to the time I spent planning for 2014 during the month of December. Don’t get me wrong — I get it, I do. I get this feeling that it’s a big process where we all sit around and make big promises to ourselves that we never keep. Why does this one time of year suddenly signify that change is actually going to happen?

My feelings on that, though, are akin to the xkcd comic on taking pictures: basically, it seems like kind of a dick move to tell other people that they’re doing life wrong, particularly in such a pessimistic fashion.

As 2013 came to a close, I was kind of a mess. The new year was around the corner and I’m a sucker for holidays, so while everyone else can boo hoo this time of year as one of false promises, I’m all about seizing that opportunity to be optimistic. Or, rather, that used to be who I was and I’m trying to make it myself again. I’m not even sure when that happened — when I stopped being the optimistic person who believed in limitless possibilities. At some point in the last year, that part of my brain got warped into seeing a thousand impending disasters. This made it nearly impossible for me to function for much of the year, but that’s a conversation for another day.

In addition to helping me reclaim my optimism, that process also made me aware of a rather self-limiting story that was already bullshit. I’ve heard plenty of people discuss this idea of discarding self-limiting stories and reaching new possibilities, and so on and so forth. (I like Nicole Antoinette’s breakdown of this.) But the idea that I’m not a good planner wasn’t even one that needed to be addressed. It was just blatantly false, because I was confusing the particular kind of organization that I struggle with as being part of the planning stage when it is actually an issue in execution. (Still working on the idea that I can’t do the execution thing. Will report back later.)

For me, the symbolism of the year changing is significant. Maybe it doesn’t mean much to you and, thus, is not helpful for you in that way. It’s not for everyone.

Part of what sold me on The Holiday Council were the interviews. I splurged and got the interviews from years past as well and was amazed by how easily won over I was by the whole thing. That is, I went into it with a very cynical mind towards all things “life coachy” and did it on a, “What the hell,” whim. As useful as I found the worksheets and calls, I also found it incredibly helpful to hear other people talking about what they do and what works for them. (There are interviews where others discuss their process, as well as a Facebook group, which was a fountain of ideas, inspiration, and encouragement.) As someone who was floundering and reticent about the whole thing, going into it from a place of desperation, this was incredibly helpful. I got to borrow pieces from what everybody did and run with it.

And so I’ve been plugging away. Being a stranger to this process, these first couple weeks have involved some fine-tuning of much of what I wrote down in December. I had some ideas and plans for the new year that I can already see weren’t quite on target. I broke down a lot of my big goals into smaller monthly objectives and some of them (like my blogging schedule) needed to start even smaller. That’s OK. Some of the words and concepts that I wrote down felt slightly off, but I couldn’t find better alternatives, so I left well enough alone. I’ve slowly been finding the right words. Bit by bit.

I should add that this major endorsement of The Holiday Council isn’t paid. Nobody asked me to do this. It’s just that this is a thing that I found incredibly helpful and I thought I’d share. This process gave me a dramatic shift in my outlook for the year, and made me feel like I can actually pick myself up, dust that 2013 dirt off my shoulders, and get back to being myself again, whatever the hell that means. It’s not the only step; I have bigger problems than this could resolve. However, this process helped me be clear and honest with myself about what those other steps are, and for that I am truly grateful to my month-and-a-half-ago self for saying, “Fuck it, what can it hurt?”

I’d add that there are ways to arrive at something similar if this kind of thing really isn’t your jam. (Though Molly does this Council thing multiple times throughout the year, so if it is, you don’t necessarily have to wait until December.) Probably the best and simplest step that I took, immediately upon starting, was to resume journaling every single day. I mentioned here, several times last fall, that I’d lost touch with that habit and I knewit was a problem and a thing I should fix. It just took me a while to get from recognizing the issue to actually correcting it.

There was a major focus problem. For me, this was the thing I needed, at that time, to reclaim that focus and figure my shit out.

Given everything I said about what I learned from others, this is a sincere question: what about you? Did you set any resolutions or do any big 2014 planning/goal-setting? Do you have a process for this kind of thing, whether it be the new year or just general, “It’s time to sort my shit,” moments? Basically: TEACH ME HOW TO PERSON. kthnx.