2018: Making Goals and Defying Gravity

Boy, what a year 2018 is turning out to be.

As the sun set on 2017, I was riding a bit of a creative high. I started January with a mandate for myself to make 2018 “My Year of Creating Fearlessly,” and although that seemed impossible just days after making that declaration, I can say with confidence that I’m doing exactly what I set out to do.

It hasn’t been easy, but it’s also involved a little bit of luck. Transforming that luck into success, however, has been the real challenge.

As I’ve done in most recent years, I refused to make any New Year’s resolutions, opting instead to prepare goals—difficult, but both measurable and achievable—that I wanted to reach before the end of the year. I carry a list of those goals with me everywhere I go, serving as a reminder to keep my attention and effort focused on those things which are most important to me.

Now that we’re just a bit beyond a third of the way into 2018, I’ve taken a look back and tracked my progress toward those goals. And I have to admit, I’m not doing too bad for once.

For example, I very much wanted to have at least five models I could work with on a regular basis, and I’m awfully close to that already. I’ve also reached new heights (for me) with networking and building my professional community, an area of my life that has always lacked.

Even publishing this particular blog entry will help, since blogging more is one of my goals and I’ve only written two new posts in the past year and a half. (Here’s hoping I get into a habit of posting once a week, like I want.)

Other areas in which I’m making progress include consuming less and creating more, finishing the Indy Mini Marathon, keeping my weight at or below my target, eating and living more healthy, and maintaining a positive attitude (OK, maybe not as much progress there as I want).

The overall goal is to make 2018 the best year of my life, and I feel like I’m well on my way to making that happen. Both 2016 and 2017 were difficult ones for my family and me, and there’s no guaranteeing that this year won’t go south, too. But at least I feel like I’ve laid a foundation for this year to be successful, and that makes me very happy. I have a terrific job, an amazing wife and kids, the greatest extended family and a few very trustworthy friends. And creatively, I feel that I’m in the best place ever.

And all that helps me reach toward yet another of the goals on my list: In spite of all the negativity and pressures that life throws at me, to keep pushing upward.

I think Stephen Schwartz, writer of the hit Broadway show “Wicked,” best summed up my year in that show’s signature song:

“Something has changed within me

Something is not the same

I’m through with playing by the rules

Of someone else’s game 

Too late for second-guessing

Too late to go back to sleep

It’s time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes and leap! 

It’s time to try

Defying gravity”