My New Year’s Resolution Is to Love My fate
Make lemonade out of lemons, add sugar, and drink up.
I have been licking my wounds a lot lately and stomping on those lemons. They’re suitable for the smelly garbage disposal, but little else.
I told myself that I was overwhelmed with all this Christmas stuff, that I’d resume control, take my butt out of neutral and get going once it was over.
And I did mean Christmas itself, not the holidays to include New Year’s, for which I do no preparation. Hey, it happens on its own, and most of the time, I kind find anyone willing to stay up later than 10:00 PM.
The trouble is, I’ve only gone far enough to put it in first gear. And I haven’t found the motivation to take my foot off the brake.
I started publishing less quantity in the hopes of achieving more quality. I’ve been checking my stats and claps less. And looking at how far I’ve come in the last year and a half.
It’s now two days after Christmas, and I’m determined to make it to at least second gear.
I’m struggling. I know, welcome to the club.
I know it’s for a reason.
Why is life challenging me, so? What’s the purpose?
Well, if I don’t keep going, I’ll never find out. And that’s the challenge; accepting whatever is and learning — and then learning some more.
It makes sense. As the great Marcus Aurelius used to say: amor fati -love your fate.
It’s the one and the only thing that is truly yours. It goes hand-in-hand with the Stoic philosophy of controlling the only thing you can in this life: yourself.
I know this. The trouble is, I don’t always feel that these setbacks will help me accomplish anything. I view them as obstacles, not tools. Not something that will change the shape and appearance of what I’m endeavoring to accomplish.
There is a lot for me to achieve on Medium, but also a lot to learn.
I feel like life is singling me out to make it harder on me than others. With all the effort I’ve made, why haven’t I seen more progress?
The truth is, life isn’t singling me out to do worse. And it isn’t singling me out to do better. It isn’t singling me out at all.
It’s treating me like it treats everyone else. This is what I’ve got to wrap my head around.
2020 is one week away, and I’m not making any New Year’s resolutions.
Do you know why?
Because my future begins now, and by the time 2020 arrives, I want to be well into my routine. Writing every day and publishing three quality blogs a week.
But I need to remember to stop the internal temper tantrums, the stomping and screaming, and asking, “why me?” when it’s the obvious answer is: “Why not?”
I need to keep this in the front of my mind, always, as I plod one step forward and two steps back. If Marcus Aurelius can do it, so can I.
So can you. We’re all just human, after all.
Amor Fati.
As Ryan Holiday puts it:
“Amor fati is a mindset that you take on for making the best out of anything that happens: Treating each and every moment — no matter how challenging — as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be okay with it but love it and be better for it. So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself, and I’m not going to try.
But I am going to stock up on sugar.
Good luck in the New Year!
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