What Lies Ahead

So I’ve decided to do a 30 day blog challenge with no real planning or idea of what I’m going to post because I’m a crazy person (a.k.a a writer). Looking around my room I should probably do a 30 day cleaning challenge, but we’ll stick with the blog challenge for now. I’m doing this because I want to focus on my blog more, and get in the habit of actually doing things and not continually pushing them off. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be posting. Some days might come from other blog challenges which I’ll note, and some will just be whatever I feel like posting that day. It might get pretty weird. You might be scared away. But if you want to stick around for 30 days that’d be awesome. I also invite you to do your own blog challenge, whether you want to make one up, borrow days from mine, or find one that’s already planned out for you. If you do, feel free to mention your blog in the comments so that we can visit each other’s challenge posts and give each other support. If you want to suggest days I’d be open to that as well.

Today I’m going to talk about the New Year, since, it’s you know, the first day of 2016. I already talked about in this post how I don’t really go in for New Year’s resolutions, but I still have hopes and plans for the New Year. The idea of making New Year’s resolutions seems odd in itself to me, because for a while now I’ve always had goals that I’m working toward. What I want for this year is for those goals to be realized, or at least to see some improvement in them. But I would have wanted that regardless of whether a New Year was starting or not. Perhaps it’s more about the clean slate for people. If the New Year is just beginning, you can’t have done anything to mess it up yet. You can’t have screwed something up. But even so, something is bound to go wrong eventually. The most cautious planner can have plans thrown awry in an instant.

I wonder if it is even possible to plan some things. Like the 30 day blog challenge. I’m always worried about what to blog about, regardless, but I can’t plan out 30 days of blogging, because I don’t know what will happen to me in those 30 days. I can’t predict the future, and neither can you. We can guess. I could just make a list of things to blog about. But what I’m saying is that if something happens to me in 15 or so days (random number) and I feel compelled to blog about it, how am I supposed to know that now?

Even when I have a topic that I want to blog about, I don’t always know what I’m going to say. Sometimes I’ll start writing it in my head and then it will be completely different when I put on paper. Sometimes when I try to plan what I’m going to write, I can’t. I just need to let the words come out, because if I don’t the post ends up seeming forced or lacking something, or I end up starring at a blinking cursor for hours on end.

Bringing it back to the New Year, what is it that I am trying to say to you? I guess I’m saying it’s good to have plans for 2016, it’s good to have goals, but you don’t really know what life will bring you. You don’t even know how much life you have left. That’s why I think we should make the most of today. Make the most of working toward your dreams, and goals, your aspirations while you have the chance. Start 2016 off right, and don’t worry if things don’t go according to plan. When does that ever happen anyway? And sometimes, it’s much better if they go off the track and you continue to follow them through the unknown lands.

What do you think about the year ahead, and will you be joining me in my blogging challenge?

Photo Credit: Christian Reimer Nebel via photopin (license)