The Year of Me: First Resolution of 2017
I don’t typically make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t give things up for Lent. I don’t journal. I write to-do lists on envelopes, not Moleskine.
But I do believe in reflection, and milestones, and paying attention to signals. To signs that it’s time for a change…that significant aspects of life have been neglected and need attention. Health and happiness, to name a few.
So I branded 2017 “The Year of Me.” Decided to go back to consulting, get more involved with causes I care about, and start working out my entire body, not just the typing texting fingers. Get outside and play! as Mum used to tell us growing up.
Exactly a year after starting to visualize what this change might look like, I finished my full-time job in December. Closed out projects, ramped up my replacement, transferred files and knowledge and advice to my teams, cancelled the recurring meetings off my online calendar, sent my final emails, wiped the computer clean, boxed up my photos, turned in my ID card and walked out the door.
Now it’s January, and the days stretch out. Reading lots of books, renting movies, indulging in Breaking Bad marathons. Seeing friends and family.
I’ve also had a night or two of insomnia, something I thought would be left behind with the old job. Now my 3 a.m. thoughts are No Job, What Next?? So ironic. But the brain is churning. I’ve got a plan.
A post on Instagram this morning: The difference between Try and Triumph is Umph. Exactly.
The first and easiest/hardest resolution is to start writing on a daily basis. Easiest because it’s just me to schedule. Hardest because it’s just me and the blank screen. After countless emails to self with the subject line “Blog XYZ observation,” usually sent from the back of a cab, I’m gonna give this a shot.
Many years ago at a Fourth of July family party, I was chatting with an aunt about a job search, an interview, whatever my transition was at the time. And she said, “But I thought you always wanted to write?”
And I did. That was the plan. I’ve always loved books. My favorite story from childhood: The summer when I was two, we visited a zoo where an ostrich grabbed my finger that was sticking through his fence. That Christmas I received an alphabet book. When we came to O for Ostrich, I pointed to the picture and said, “He bit me.” And Mum nearly fell off the couch.
I read my way through grade school and volunteered at the elementary then town libraries, checking out as many books as I shelved. I distinctly remember walking over to the YA section after I read my way through the children’s section. Soon I would venture across to the grownup section…where it was a lot harder to figure out who to read. There were no recommendation engines back then.
My college essay described this transition from discovering beloved authors and series — Betsy, Tacy & Tib, Ramona the Pest, Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the Chronicles of Narnia, Judy Blume, the Dark is Rising series, S.E. Hinton, Robert Lipsyte, Madeleine L’Engle, Robert Cormier — to navigating the adult stacks. Finding new writers to curl up with. Because there’s nothing better than getting lost in a new book, and nothing worse than arriving at the last page.
In high school I wrote a sports column for the school paper and edited the yearbook. I entered a small writing contest and traveled to attend a workshop with the other finalists (my first business trip!). In college I was an English major, wrote for the school paper, then became editor-in-chief. Interned at a local magazine by day, waited tables by night.
Senior year I visited the career planning office to start the job search. This was 1991: before the consumer Internet, before Monster.com, before most dotcoms. Flipping through a book of job descriptions, I came across “Public Relations” on my way to “Publishing.” Had never heard of PR, but it sounded interesting and I had “transferable skills.”
Twenty-five years later, I’ve worked in a number of industries and cities, for corporations and startups, doing PR and corporate communications and marketing and website development. With the common thread of writing, editing, positioning, branding and story-telling. Information design in the simplest form.
But it wasn’t the writing my aunt had reminded me about. My dream. (Literally: Years ago, I dreamed I was looking in a bookstore window, and saw books stacked up with CHRISTINE MOHAN in big letters on each jacket. That said, I dream I am flying or dying every other day. Plus, bookstores themselves are dying out. And even more unfortunately, I didn’t see the title.)
Last summer, as a step in this transition to 2017, I combined personal blog posts with Mohan Media consulting posts and ported them over to this Medium space. With the intention of writing on a regular basis. Didn’t quite take until now.
Here are the ground rules so far, on Day One:
No web. I haven’t connected this computer to wifi. It’s going to be a writing-only machine. An old-fashioned, one-purpose tool.
Being untethered feels odd. But if I hook this up to the Internet, all is lost. Before I know it, 15 tabs will be open and I won’t remember how I started down the rabbit hole. Any research or fact-checking, I can do in the final proofing stages when dialed in. And not before.
No other files. If I put projects on this desktop, forget it. There are client tasks to be done, errands to be run. The little anxiety-inducing icons will be impossible to ignore.
No phone. That’s in the next room. Too many apps will cause too many wrinkles in time.
One of my favorite aspects of consulting was working from anywhere; to travel light and write via coffee shop, co-working space, subway. (Turns out my ability to block out my siblings, so I could read on long car rides, is a sidegig superpower.) So I’ll jot notes on my phone in transit.
But the longform writing and revising will happen here on El Capitan. This old MacBook Pro OS X served me well when I started Mohan Media, Inc. in 2011. And it will do just fine as I hunker down to the work of daily writing. Every morning, in the Hemingway tradition. At a corner desk, as Stephen King advises. Bird by bird, in the Anne Lamott way.
Here goes. Wish me luck!
