A Year of Creativity. A Year of Learning.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to appreciate my birthday. I see it less as an opportunity to celebrate, and more as a symbolic point in time, a marker in my life for what has passed and what’s to come.

Last year I began an exercise that I believe will become a new routine, spending the day reflecting on my past, present, and future, and then prayerfully asking what was to be accomplished in the coming year. In 2015, I felt a distinct call to create more, as I felt that my personal creativity had began to flounder. Working in the creative field had meant that in my ‘off hours’ I didn’t feel like making anything myself, and I knew that wasn’t quite right.

So, I decided to kickstart that part of my brain by spending the year creating. I began with the simple act of taking (and posting!) a photo, every day; a small shift that was both deceptively simple and difficult. So many nights I would realize the clock was about to strike midnight and I hadn’t taken a single shot; so I would get out of bed, go outside, and take a picture of a leaf, or walk to my windowsill, and capture the raindrops. The act of making a habit of photography made an impact, and before long I remembered the joy I took in capturing my city’s skyline, or my wife’s smile. At the end of it all, I likely tripled or quadrupled the amount of photos I had been taken, and felt reenergized to take even more. The exercise pushed me forward, and reminded me how much I loved the art in the first place.

Once this habit was something I was both comfortable with and took joy in, I continued flexing the creative muscles by writing, starting this very blog. In many ways, the experience was similar. I started with half-hearted writing projects, writing reflections on a film with my words feeling meandering but intriguing. Then I wrote another, that felt better. Then I wrote about the technology I care deeply about, and felt a spark — and ended up writing more words than I thought possible on app design. In flexing the creative muscle I found that making a habit of writing, too, has become a joyous and life-changing experience.

So for 2016, I asked the question again — what does the year hold?

This time, I felt like I was given a challenge to learn in response. In particular, I felt a challenge to read.

So I have been, every day. My birthday was one month ago to date, and I’ve read dozens of books already, at any point working through five or six.

I’m reading so many books because I feel compelled to open myself up to as many voices as possible, voices I might not otherwise give a chance. I’m aware that overall retention will be low, but even in this brief period I’ve been stunned by the impact what I’ve read has had on my life. I’ve been struck by C.S. Lewis’ description of the spiritual world taking place all around us, and Bernadette Jiwa’s charge to make meaning a key part of what we do. I’ve reflected on Francis Chan’s belief in what the concept of eternity means for our marriages, and Anne Lammot’s honest and humble advice to aspiring writers, and Leo Tolstoy’s beautiful walk through Jesus’ life. The list goes on and on, with old and new writers alike.

Here’s to a year of learning, and a year of books.