Captain’s log, stardate 20171230

Hey everybody! We’re going to get signed!

Sent by Jonathan Stark on December 30th, 2017

I’m not big into New Year’s resolutions. It’s probably been close to three decades since I made one.

It’s not that I’m against the idea in general... they just didn’t work for me so I stopped doing them.

Actually, saying they didn’t work for me is an understatement. It’s not that they were ineffective... it’s worse than that. They had a demonstrably negative impact on me psychologically.

I used to make these grandiose promises to myself like, “This is the year I get a record deal!”

ASIDE: For the under-forty crowd a “record deal” was like a bank loan given to a rock band by something called a “record company”. Also... a “record” was a round piece of plastic that contained audio information encoded in a spiral groove that was physically carved into it. The decoder was called a “record player” which had a needle that was dragged through the groove by the rotation of the oh my god I’m so old please send help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

Anyhoo... 😉

The excitement of making a grandiose promise to myself on New Year’s Eve always - ALWAYS - turned to despair relatively quickly. It felt like breaking a promise to myself.

Which lead to a feeling of not trusting myself.

Which is a scary feeling.

I think my problem was that I was setting unrealistic goals.

But dig this...

My goals were not unrealistic because they were objectively unobtainable - after all, plenty of people had record deals at the time - they were unrealistic because I had no plan for achieving them.

So.

If you are thinking about making a grandiose New Years resolution this year, first ask yourself this:

“What are the steps I will take to achieve this outcome?”

If you have a plan in mind - even a very rough one - I say go for it!

If not, then ask yourself, “Self, are you bullshitting me?”

Life is too short to lie to yourself.

Yours,

—J