I am a big New Year’s Resolution guy. Every year, I make ten resolutions. I make ten because, for one, in completely unoriginal fashion, I am bad at keeping them. I know that if I make ten, the chances I can hold out on one are high, and in my need for self-validation, I would count that as a success.
What I have never done, however, is share them with anyone but my wife. But this is The Storehouse, where I bring my whole tithe, my whole offering that I might have space and room in the days ahead to push forward when things are different or hard. Isn’t this the place I should keep things like this? Goals and progress, updates on my journey to become a more complete person this year? So I will share them, and why I feel that I need to accomplish them. And you, reader, will keep me close to them, simply by my knowing that you have seen.
You will be a witness, and should I fall away, you will know that at the least, I began a noble pursuit for the sake of my betterment. Do not judge me too harshly. After all, if I had the character and constitution to do these things, they would not be my aspirations.
I promise nothing. Perhaps I will rage against the dying of the light. Perhaps I will end the year lazier, fatter, and less connected than ever. Either way, I will keep this post up so that posterity will know that I was once the kind of man who set goals for himself. I guess I make one promise.
Here goes…
1. Write 385 words five times a week
This is really my way of “chunking” two real goals: to write 100,000 words this year and to make writing more of a habitual practice rather than an indulgence. I have not set a requirement for genre, and I hope that the 100,000 will allow for a few short stories, a successful Substack, and a finished novel. I count this one as a vocational goal because, well, a man can dream (My 385th word, before editing. Day one, check).
I could write every day, but I won’t. Five days a week turns it into a job, at least in the way my brain works. I could write more words per day, and I will (still on day one after all). But I will not if I do not sit down to do the writing. Let’s hope I have something to say. At least, 100,000 words worth.
2. Read 35 books
This may be the hardest goal I have set. This is the fourth year in a row I have set it, and I have yet to meet it.
I always thought it would be cool, a great goal, to read one more book every year than the year before. In 2019, I read 33 books. In 2020, 34. In 2021, my output dropped to 26, followed by 29 in 2022. Last year, I dropped to 19 books. So a lofty goal, but it can happen. I am going to read more fiction, so that should help. And baby books. Lots of baby books.
3. Submit 50 times
The Storehouse was my first step in putting what I write out into the universe, without any expectations. Submitting what I write to other publications has been another step. I hit the trifecta officially, with an academic publication in 2022, a short story last year, and an essay coming in the spring.
This goal is not to discount Substack, but simply a reality of two factors, one positive, and one a result of my deeply lacking character. I submit elsewhere because I want to exercise every aspect of a writer’s journey in hopes of seeing a legitimate impact come to fruition. I have things to say if only because it benefits me to say them. This is lofty enough, and I do not delude myself into thinking they will affect others. But, how will I know unless I see them go elsewhere.
But then there is the dirty part. I am afraid, and I do not want to be. Afraid to let people know that I write. A holdover from the notions of masculinity taught to me by other young men whose greatest fear was being called effeminate. The nature of holding a pencil, a phallic symbol, to write things, the erotic tendencies of evaluating a sentence to make it flowery, and flowers! God, the colors alone! Idiotic, offensive, but also, a small view of man and world.
So fear is the strange fruit of a childhood where fear was eschewed at all cost. To submit is to keep me from descending into a state of caring what others think.
4. Eat something intended to be healthy every day
Just one thing.
I have tried all the diets. Low carb, keto, cleanses, intermittent fasting, non-intermittent fasting, coffee and nicotine, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, intermittent feasting, lion, wolf, etc.
The big problem is, well, I don’t want to do them. At all. I want to eat the other stuff. I convince myself that a cheeseburger is healthy because meat and cheese is keto and the bun is really necessary because I like to workout and how can I perform at the gym without carbs and fries are a vegetable and so is the canola oil they are fried in. A canola tree? Bush? Root? Either way, it is a vegetable, I think. And I think these things because I want to eat it. I have trained myself to think it. To think the poison is the cure.
So this year, I will not diet. I will eat one thing that I do not have to rationalize every day, one thing intended not to poison me. I hope it will be a boulder rolling downhill. I will do so in hopes that the cheeseburgers and pizza and my wife’s chocolate chip banana bread (really just cake with bananas in it. A fruit! Definitely a fruit), will kill me less quickly.
5. Do something active every day
I know this is annoying, but this one should be easy. I love to go to the gym, to lift and box and work. This one is intended to keep me active, without forcing me to do everything all the time. What if I went on a walk with my wife today instead of leaving her, face glowing from both pregnancy and morning sickness, to spend and hour and a half stroking my ego. Active, not perfect. Which brings me to…
6. Do something KT wants to do once a week
There are things that are easy in marriage, or at least in ours. Things like convincing or being convinced to get ice cream. Like finishing all of Shonda Rhimes’ shows in a year. Like badgering my wife about what I am writing or reading.
Like being incredibly selfish. My wife said to me a few months ago, while spending another night watching another doctor or lawyer or fixer makeout with an incredibly smart and yet wickedly selfish male lead, that she feels like we are the lamest people in the world. And we are. In bed early after watching shows and making dinner.
What she meant, what I heard, is that we don’t go out to dinner or go on picnics or to shows. When pressed, she admitted that she wants to do those things. What she meant, what I heard, was that her husband is so focused on work and gym and writing and reading and thinking and watching that he missed the part where she was neither introvert nor lame.
She likes to go and do. And so do I, but in a different way. But my different way takes precedent over hers. And so this year, at least one time a week, we will do something for KT only. This does not necessitate that I do not want to do it, but only that she does want to. Because she deserves it.
And because the show is really about the female lead, and the incredibly smart but wickedly selfish male lead should, at least once every seven days, recognize that he is lucky to be there for the drama and the kissing.
7. Listen to the Bible this year
Last year, I stopped reading the Bible every day. I read it through the previous five years, and it had become a chore, the way repeating words over and over causes the syllables to become disconnected, the sounds to lose their meaning. So I studied it in church and in small group, and read through Luke’s gospel during December. But I left it there.
I do not recommend this. But my own life (Sinful nature? Frustration? Apathy?), had gotten in the way of the Word’s ability to pierce me, to mean something. So last year I took a hard reset, and this year I am listening, so as to take it in in a fresh way. Listen, think, meditate, and be open to a new, strange fire.
8. Keep a weekly schedule
Ask around. You have never met someone more unaware of upcoming life events. Family birthdays? Redownload Facebook every few months to see what you missed. Doctor’s appointments? If I go, my wife told me the morning of. Work meetings? A teacher will flag me down on their way to the meeting.
But I have a baby coming. The family birthdays can never slide when your child enters the world on a day, the most important day. The doctor’s appointments are life, the heartbeat of a baby girl the purpose of a visit, the black and white waves of her forming body the only thing adorning our fridge. The health of her mother is my only need. I cannot miss the work meeting when the money they pay buys Clementine food.
Sometimes it takes a life change to realize how disconnected, how unplanned your weeks have been. So I will connect. Parenthood takes planning.
9. Monthly Budget/Calendar Meeting as a Family
Parenthood takes planning, but so does accomplishing goals, and building a family, and going on vacations, and buying a home, and every other aspect of adulthood. I am not a great planner. But my wife is, so thank God for her guidance on keeping a calendar, and for the ability to have money to budget. We meet, we laugh, and we refuse to let life keep us from the things we say we want us to do.
The spiral of the mundane, the drift that is created by every day occurrences can only be stopped by regular checks of the status quo. So we check. I didn’t know I would need to, but 2024 is the year we keep the ship on course
10. Save for a down payment
Woe is me. I am a millennial married to a GenZer who cannot afford the coveted land and property of the generation before. Curse the ground owned by others.
But seriously, houses are expensive. But this year wisdom, planning, and outright stinginess will get us there. Even with a baby. No oat milk upgrades or fancy seasonal syrups for us, we’ll take our coffee black. We’ll figure out daycare, and we’ll work out monthly saving targets. And we’ll get to our goal. Because the past is now the future, and pendulum always swings. Building a home often comes with the necessary nuisance of buying a house. So we will buy a house, and we will continue to build a home.
So there it is. Be it resolved, I will be accountable for the things I say I want to do, at least to those who read this.
The goals of a man trying to be better this year than last year. So far so good.
I'll say this - as an older parent of older kids - they are 17 and 19 now - that making resolutions is fine thing pre-child, but when the child gets here you will have to be flexible. In fact, that will be the name of the game until they are as old as mine are! So make your resolutions with the best of intentions, but realize that your commitment will need to stretch and flex for a while...and just be resolved to laugh if you can't live to the level of completion. There's no exhaustion like new-baby exhaustion. But there's also no love like it, either.
I still want to read the Bible because I retain it better when doing so— but for when I listen I’ve been trying Dwell Bible app, there is a free trial. So far I’ve enjoyed using it when driving or doing dishes and the like.
Looking forward to reading more of your stuff with your more regular writing schedule.