My 2018 New Year’s Challenge
Happy New Year, fellow geeks! I’ll admit that I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions or spend much time considering the opportunity that a fresh new year brings, but 2017 was a year of embracing what worked for me and letting go of what didn’t, and I don’t want to lose that momentum in the coming year.
Source: Giphy. Description: a gif of colorful fireworks exploding in the night sky.
I’ve been thinking about what I want to focus on in 2018, and I’ve realized that one of the places I still have plenty of room to grow in is making choices based on my hopes and not my fears. I have a tendency to sabotage my own happiness by either saying no to or bailing on good things out of fear that they won’t work out, and I’m making 2018 the year of not letting the panicky voice in my brain run the show. That’s a big ambiguous mission, so I’ve come up with a more concrete challenge to start with, and I’m extending it to all of you, because if I’m going to do something hard, I want to drag as many people along for the ride as I can.
Source: Giphy. Description: the 10th Doctor from Doctor Who holding out his hand to the camera and saying, “Come with me.”
So here’s my 2018 challenge for us all: do one thing you’ve been putting off because of fear.
Sign up for that 5K, put together that cosplay, start that career change, have that hard conversation—whatever it is you’ve been meaning to do but have been avoiding because it’s big and terrifying, let 2018 be the year that you acknowledge the fear and do the hard thing anyway.
For me, this means finally getting back into the world of fiction writing. In college, I wrote two novels and landed a literary agent who got me a contract offer from editor at a major publishing house. I was ecstatic. My agent was working on securing a movie deal now that we had a publisher, and my future was looking bright. Part way through the contract negotiations with the publishing house, my agent called to say that the editor had rescinded the offer without any explanation. She reached out to a few other editors, but the whole process got pretty quiet after that. I took what was supposed to be a short break from writing things for myself to recover from the disappointment of having my plans axed and the fear that maybe the contract had been pulled because I wasn’t a competent writer.
Source: Giphy. Description: George Michael Bluth from Arrested Development walking sadly with his head down.
Six years later, I am ready to end that break. In 2018 I’m committing to write some sort of fiction. I don’t care about length and I don’t care if it’s good enough to share—I’m tired of letting the fear that I will never write anything worthy of publishing stop me from doing something I once loved.
Now it’s your turn. What scary thing are you going to take on in 2018? Share your resolution in the comments or keep it to yourself—either way, may we all own our hopes and tackle our fears in this new year.
