I suppose on this day many folks are ruminating about the year just completed. Personally, I don't think I can bear that. While to be sure that would give anyone willing to do the work plenty of writing fodder (and make a great writing prompt for this day), this also happens to be my 63rd Birth Day celebration! I've made it right to the very verge of "Geezer", and I'm fairly ambivalent about it. 2018 was a year chock full of remembrance. As a passable history buff with a special interest in military history, I have been close to many remembrances of World War I, "The Great War".
I am an American, so much of my perspective comes from an American lexicon of those momentous events. I have been much more interested this year in seeing that time from other perspectives, primarily from among the other major combatants. One of the most striking things to me about the remembrances of this past year have come from the British perspective. We have many memorials to our fallen here, but there is something remarkably "honoring" in the way the Brits have pulled this year together. For them, this is a mostly current event amidst what is, for the UK a turbulent time. It has been remembered as a deeply personal event. Behind them has been, in my view, France. Germany has not had a lot to say about this war. Russia has celebrated the Great Revolution. America's has, I feel been more of a muted response. That is what may seem to be a long way to arrive at my point, but I do feel that context matters.
I look back to 2018 in my life with a muted response. I do not wish to experience 2019 with a muted response at all. I wish to dare to be bolder in my living, and in my life in 2019. As of my exact time of birth, it has taken 364 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes to achieve what most have already achieved this year: a birth day celebration. I believe that 2018 has been, more than not, a year of constant reflection on current events in my life, and in my world. I do not believe the world, my country, my fellow citizens, or even I myself have fared particularly well in 2018. The reasons and the realities, as they say are legion.
I have re-discovered the joy of putting pen to paper, and in 2019 I fully intend to be the recipient of as much of that joy as possible. I have pen, paper and ink. I have a Bullet Journal, and a Diary/Journal to map the landscape before me. I hope to have fellow travelers along with me either for a moment, or for a time. It just seems to me as though journeys are better when shared.
Today stands as a starting line more than a finishing line for me, personally. As I have stated in other places, the things I want to complete in 2019 revolve around one particular goal: To make you think differently. Agreement or disagreement with what I or others say is interesting but it is--finally--navel gazing. What you or I DO in 2019 will matter much! I want this year coming to be filled with mattering moments, whether they be of joy or sadness, triumph or tragedy (and there will be no shortage of any of these, and more), ending on December 31st 2019 with some milestones that are significant in a very real and personal way.
Yes, the writing will matter to me. It should. Your writing should matter to you. Whether or not my writing is ever witnessed by another human is not the issue, for I write first for myself. If that is seen by those who will read my words in one hundred years (perish the thought!), that more than anything else is what I hope they "see" from my writing. My words mattered to me. I hope they will see my dedication to those things that truly matter to me. I hope they will sense just a bit of my humor, my hope, and my absolute conviction that anyone can achieve their dreams. Or find better dreams to achieve. Lofty perhaps, but true for me.
Anticipation. Commemoration. Remembrance. Fulfillment. Expectation. How does one purvey this in their writing? That's the journey for me and the writing I will write, every day in 2019. I do truly hope you will, too because
Writing Is FUN!
Bud