Every day is New Year's Day

Part of the goal of starting a digital garden was to recognize that things like my writing, my learning, my full digital creative output are not ever finished and don't come out necessarily in neat little packages that warrant a "blog post". Sometimes you do more, more often than not you do less, and it often comes in bursts. I think it's possible to take a similar view towards New Year's resolutions. While the new year gives us occasion to declare one or more "big" changes to our lives, real change is more sporadic and gradual.

That is to say, every day is New Year's Day if you want it to be.

The real problem with the change in perspective this brings is that there's no impetus to actually get up off the couch and ever do anything. Today is new year's day, you insist. Yes, well, so is tomorrow.

No matter how many times you write resolutions, or swear off writing them, at the end of the day, at the end of the blog post, at the end of the very sentence you're writing, you are stuck with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. And in fact it is often observed that people will plan out actions, and derive enough pleasure from the planning and discussing the plans with others, that they never carry through or feel the need to carry through.

It even happens that people plan vacations and get much more joy out of the anticipation of the vacation then they do out of the vacation itself. People are happy when they're looking forward to a vacation, but just as depressed and anxious as ever when they're on one.

I've actually considered this when writing about getting "nothing" done. Do I really want to get any of these things done? I mean, instinctively, I want to be a good husband to Abby, which was always shoehorned into my resolutions when I made them. But that comes so naturally and doesn't take any sustained effort. All the other things like making music, writing software in my free time, visiting Noisebridge, tending this digital garden, etc -- do I really want to do those things, or is it enough for me to talk about doing them and tell people I want to do them. As much as I tell myself to "just do it", I'm not sure "it" really wants to get done.

Another way to put it is: if you want to do something, you do it. If you never do it, you never wanted it in the first place. Which is the TLDR on a blog post from my old Medium blog which was titled "What I learned by generally not blogging for 15 years (even though I thought I wanted to)". Good read, much recommend.

Looking just at this page, I've linked to 6 different blog posts from the past several years, and it would be easy to come to the conclusion that my "personal" blog was actually a journal chronicling the persistent existential dread of a serial procrastinator. I'm not sure I could really convince you otherwise.

So where does that leave us with regards to the new year, this new year, and new year's day? I honestly don't believe in free will or any purpose to life, so I think it's okay to leave us as just a bunch of brains floating in space, tinkering as we might, without any real cause or consequence. I will do what I will do, I won't do what I won't, and in the end none of it matters so it's all okay.