What I'm Looking Forward to in 2024

Writing a post like this on New Year's Day would definitely be enough to land me on the list for cheesiest bloggers of all time. How many saps like me are publishing their own list of reasons to be positive for the coming year? Now, I'm not saying mine will be different. In fact, as I'm writing this little intro, I have no idea how this essay will take shape.

We should start with a look back at 2023. My family has a tradition for the New Year. As the clock strikes 12 and the ball drops, we write down one wish for the coming year on a small scrap of paper and burn it in a candle. I've heard that if the entirety of the paper burns in 60 seconds, that wish will come true.

Needless to say, we've done it for years and I've never had a wish come true. For a while, my wishes took the form of, "Let me publish a novel this year." Obviously, that didn't happen. I'm not a superstitious man by any means, and so it didn't take much for me to discount this little tradition as just a little thing to appease my family. Honestly, I still feel my headspace leaning in that direction. I don't think that little paper has a damn thing to do with how the rest of my year goes, or how my goals get accomplished. Instead, the most charitable meaning I can give this tradition lies in its power to psychoanalyze you in an instant. At midnight, the thing you most wish to come true in the coming year materializes itself baldly in your mind, with all veils and barriers between subconscious drive and conscious realization shattered by the ticking clock. You're called upon for brevity, for quickness, with almost no time to think it through.

As the year changed from 2022 to 2023, my goal obviously remained the same: publish a novel. However, I decided to take a different tact that night. Rather than wish for specific things, I would wish for the fortitude to realize those things. So in the first 60 seconds of 2023, I wrote on the little scrap of paper, "Let my aim be true."

What did I mean by that? Only that I wanted the focus and drive to become a published author rather than wishing for the thing itself. I thought that by asking for the strength to achieve my own goals rather than just the goals themselves, I'd not only gain greater fruit from their accomplishment but also help in my sustainability to strive for new goals. Of course, the next question arises: How did it work out for me?

Honestly… I don't know. I clearly did not become a published novelist in 2023 as I had hoped, and the year came with challenges which bowed me enough to nearly break my will to continue. Yet I went on, I kept plugging away, and still I keep chipping at this dream I've had for nearly seven years now. I can't honestly say if I am possessed with the focus and drive for which I had wished in the infancy of 2023. I also can't say that my incessant will to complete this goal doesn't fall into the realm of folly rather than noble spirit.

Yet 2023 did see the resurrection of this blog. It saw me start to build a little platform of my own with people who care for my material. In literary terms, 2023 saw the end of my trilogy of fantasy novels, which I am more than eager to publish one day. I haven't talked much, if at all, about my life in the iron church on this website, but my gym life saw me battle through setbacks and push for new personal bests.

I wrote a post on here a while ago called, "What is One Year?", in which I reflected on how much had changed for me in just 365 days. During that period, I had been a Research Associate at a biotechnology startup in Maryland, a senior in college graduating with an award-winning capstone project, and then a process development scientist at a major pharmaceutical company. Obviously, a lot of change. I suspect that as the years go on, the change lessens. Days become blended into one another. We begin to lead the lives of quiet desperation of which Thoreau wrote.

For 2024, I'm expecting the general change in my life to be minimal. No more month-long breaks from work in which I can travel the world. No more great upheavals. Just the steady pursuit of a singular reduction in complexity amidst an ever-chaotic environment. I fear things about the future: I fear that I won't be able to complete my goal of publishing a novel again this year. I fear that the creative spirit in me will be crushed by the machine of the 40 hour work week. I fear that the relationships in my life will wither despite my greatest attempts to keep them afloat. When I'm left alone in the dark with my thoughts, I fear that the end of all things I associate with myself could be nearer and more inevitable than ever, and that I will be powerless to stop it; I fear that I may even welcome it.

Yet these thoughts are born out of a place in my subconscious which alights at such dark, cold, and rainy days as the one on which I write this essay. In reality, I'm cautiously optimistic about 2024. It'll be a year of trials, definitely. Nothing in this world is earned without sacrifice. There will be pain for me both physically and emotionally, and nothing I do can change that general course of events. However, within that suffering there may yet be found salvation. I'm not one to say things like, "2024 is my year!" Of course, it may well be, but only time will tell. I'm hoping instead that 2024 becomes yet another year of improvement in my craft, in my passion, and in my pursuit of this creative art.

So, what am I looking forward to in 2024? I'm looking forward to new relationships. I'm looking forward to where my writing will take me. I'm working on another novel now, and I'm still querying for my other ones. I'm hoping I'll make just one splash in the large ocean of the literary world in 2024, and that this one splash will be my ticket into the life I want and need for myself. As for this little-spoken-of gym life, I'm hoping that 2024 brings me greater health and strength than the previous year with as little injury as possible.

So that should put a neat little bow on last year and put a nice, steady vision into the coming year. For a little personal note, I hope that everyone reading this makes 2024 as much "their year" as they can, and I hope that the world as a whole is brought to greater happiness.

I told you this post would be cheesy.