Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

resolve

time, see what’s become of me

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I am making a New Year’s resolution.

I haven’t made any resolutions for over two decades. I’ve always believed that resolutions are intentions to fail.

Or, as I said back in 2001, “You can’t really resolve to do anything except for those things so explicitly under your own power that you could and should be doing them anyway.” A decade later in 2011, I added, “Why should 1/1 be any different from 4/5 or 6/6 or any other day of the year?”

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In January 2004 I said I was not resolving to do three things, but that I’d like keep my focus on them throughout the year. They were:

  1. Know What I’m Spending
  2. Be Aware of What I Eat
  3. Use Time Smarter

Even as my life got more complex in the following decade, I hewed closely to those non-resolves and they served me well. As I said in 2007, “even if I went on a bender of money or time wasting, or food devouring, at least I knew it was just a bender.”

(A decade ago I tried to expanded those three goals to 10 Commandments. They were an excellent set of commandments that would be terrific to live by, but they proved to be too many things to keep in mind all the time. Three is a magic number, after all.)

After I had those three rules in place, instead of making resolutions I began to focus on goals. Goals aren’t ephemeral ongoing vows. They are tangible, doable, accomplishable things, like “get my driver’s license” or “record 10 songs.”

I liked to set a large amount of goals in January and then see where the year took me. I thought of them as the corporate balance sheet of the business of me. I’d grade myself at the end of the year, and it could be as revealing to score well as to score badly. As I explained 2010, “The goals were good for something else, too – they let me know what wasn’t important. If I cannot bring myself to tag the last 800 posts from CK’s first three months even with my grade hanging on the line, it’s just not gonna happen.”

In 2014, I claimed even those goals were getting overwhelming, and I was going to strip down to a simple flowchart. I think that had less to do with the goals being a bad idea and more to do with having an infant human to raise and an infant start-up team to grow, plus two adolescent bands to lead. I needed simplicity.

Then, all of those non-resolutions and goals trickled away. I kicked off both 2015 and 2016 without mentioning them at all. January 2017-18 & 20 were consumed with comics posts. I didn’t even post in January of 2019 or 2021-22.

Something interesting happened in those intermediate five years other than just moving to New Zealand. To put it plainly: my life went from the simplest it has ever been to the hardest I’ve ever experienced. [Read more…] about time, see what’s become of me

what is this year for?

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I’m infamous in my avoidance of resolutions.

What are they? Vague promises that you might do something in way that is either unmeasurable or ridiculously unattainable.

Goals are different than resolutions. Resolutions are about resolve. Goals are about getting stuff done. Or trying to, anyway. It’s not such a bad thing to have a few goals you aren’t able to achieve.

So, maybe a better a word for them is aspirations. While I’m infamous for my avoidance of resolutions, I am quite adamant about this other thing. When I worked in the corporate world, I patterned my goals off of our company’s Annual Incentive Plan – you know, the thing that determined if we got a bonus and how big it would be. My goals worked like that. They were many infinite line items that added up to one hundred potential percentage points. All things I ought to do, and perhaps ought to do very well. I might only reach 60%, but that would still be a high-achieving year.

I didn’t really have those in 2013.

Maybe it was because I shattered so many of my old standards in 2012, like playing more shows, learning more songs, and writing with purpose here on CK. As a result, despite 2013 being pretty awesome by most accounts – new job, healthy baby, booked shows whenever I wanted to play them – it felt like kind of a flop. Lots of stuff got done, but nothing I was planning on doing.

Yesterday morning I began to write up that complex, nesting doll version of my goals. As I drafted and redrafted, I realized that they just don’t apply to where I am in life right now. Maybe it’s adulthood, or fatherhood, or start-up-hood. Whatever it is, I no longer have the need to achieve in forty distinct categories.

Instead, I present you with my 2014 Activity Flow Chart:

Are you awake?

If yes, are you at work?

If no, are you with the baby?

If no, have you written a blog post?

If yes, have you exercised in some way?

If yes, have you rehearsed music?

Really, you did all of those things? Great! Consider tidying your physical or digital life or finish up a little project.

10 Commandments for 2013

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Happy New Year, et cetera, et cetera.

The last time I was at work (mmm, 4-day weekends), a few of us clustered around Ashley’s desk and tried to name all 10 Commandments. I was brought up on that stuff, a mind full to the brim of bible verses, but now it’s all been replaced with key changes and X-Men errata. I only got five commandments in before I ran out of steam.

What struck me as we tried to name the remaining commands is that once you discard the obviously godly ones, you’re simply left with sensible suggestions to live at an even keel. That’s why they got codified into religious texts. It’s not like they’re god’s most notable oration, you know? They’re about balanced living.

I don’t make resolutions. Or, more accurately, I made a perfectly sensible set of them nine years ago and see no reason to change them at this point. However, that doesn’t preclude me from having guidelines or goals.

Or commandments.

Thus, here are my 10 Commandments for 2013. I don’t think I’m going to obey each one every day. But, I do think if I keep them in mind most of the time I’m going to enjoy this year more than the last.

1. Establish a Vision. Know the shape of the future you’re living towards, even if that vision is vague and shifting. After shrugging off so many potential apocalypses in 2012, don’t live towards a vacuum.

2. Value What You Have. The next best thing might make life great, but before you go after it take a moment to consider what you did with the last best thing.

3. Create Opportunities (To Create). Find time in your routine for creativity, but also know when to break out of your routine to create a unique opportunity.

4. Deliver More.  Years and careers and lives are better measured in achievements than attempts. Find a way to mark every month or week with something completed rather than five things started.

5. Fail More. The quickest path to mediocrity is only trying things you know you can do and delivering things you know are great. Do more. Stop worrying so much about if any of it is going to be any good.

6. Engage in Social Penetration. Value the narratives of others as you would have them value your own. We’re all stuck inside our brains at the center of our own universes, and everyone loves to have a visitor in their galaxy. Try engaging in other people’s stories more often and more genuinely.

7. Consume Appropriate Portions. Whether it’s food, work, sleep, exercise, or time spent with a good book, there is always too much of a good thing. Listen to the voice inside your head that says, “you may have had enough for now.”

8. Acknowledge Your Body. The voice inside your head does not always take your body into account, but if you listen you’ll learnt that your body rarely lies. We’re physical beings. If your body says “run,” go for a run. (If you’re body says “ice cream,” try to figure out why it’s saying “ice cream.”)

9. Good Habits Don’t Have to be Obsessions. Having a good habit does not mean it has to be the focus of every single day. You can skip a day of blogging or a week at the gym without shattering your habit. The only thing that can break a habit is you.

10. Focus on the Positive. It’s so easy to be a critic – to define your life by what you dislike. Stop doing that so much. An average day should have as many positives as negatives. Try grading things up from zero instead of always docking points off of unattainable perfection.

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I don’t have a single resolution for 2013, but if you want to know how I plan to live my year I can’t say it any more plainly than that. They don’t address everything and I might not obey them every day, but I think I could do a lot worse than use that list to guide my actions.

But, enough about me – what about you? Would my commandments work in your life? What is my list missing that’s essential to yours?

Who will I be in 2012?

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Eight years ago (!) I made three blanket resolutions that I have hung on to nearly every week of my life since them.

Clearly, they work well for me and do not need any changing.

Hell, they could work for anyone – watch what you spend, watch what you eat, and spend your time wisely.

Doing all three of them doesn’t yield any specific sort of result, but you wind up with plenty of extra money, energy, and time – the three things we’re always wishing for.

It’s deciding what to do with all that extra capacity in your life that is the tricky part.

It’s easy to see the benefit of hindsight. 2009 was a year of saving up my life. 2010 was a year of spending it. 2011 was a year of enjoying it. I saved for the house, rehearsed the hell out of the bands, and worked my butt off for a promotion, spent my cache of effort, and then reaped the rewards.

As 2012 stretches out empty in front of us, I find myself wondering – what else do I want? You can’t live your whole life off of the royalty check of one cool thing you did, once upon a time. That’s how reality TV stars are born. It’s a land of diminishing returns.

If you didn’t get everything you wanted in 2011, I hope you know what it is and how you’re going to get it in 2012.

If you’re happy with who and where you are right now, I hope you find yourself ready and willing to want something new.

As for me, at the beginning of a new year I am always looking forward to becoming a better version of myself.

I will let you know as soon as I figure out who he is.

 

pressure on my chest

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I claim not to make New Year’s Resolutions, but that doesn’t stop me from taking on a slew of new projects every January and getting crushed under their collective weight.

They’re not resolutions, I reason, they’re fresh starts. Lots of projects, blogging, and singing in store for the new year that simply didn’t make sense to start in the bustle of December due to all the holiday downtime. It’s a wishlist of personal creativity, every successive idea mounting like a weight against my heart and mind, lest I let it slip away.

Not coincidentally, I have a similar streak of getting sick every January for the past few years, which leads directly into my debilitating, house-bound February Funk. It doesn’t matter if I get a flu shot, take my vitamins, eat well, get good sleep, and slam down OJ all day. Somehow, some way, a tickle of sickness finds its way into my throat until it becomes tightness in my chest.

I hate it.

First, because I am not that person. I don’t get sick. Or, I didn’t, but now I do with great predictable accuracy, and I hate it.

Even more, I hate that it completely derails my ambition for the year – playing gigs, recording projects, and new songs all go by the wayside while I’m hoarse and scratchy for half a month.

This week I started feeling that familiar, dreaded tickle and fought back hard.  More vitamins, more food, more sleep, and more OJ. I seem to have staved off the actual illness, but I’m still feeling the after-effects – the pressure on my chest.

I hate it, and it made learning vocals to our new Filmstar song hard, it’s going to make my rehearsal of our Garbage tribute set suck, and it transformed the advertising tour of the airport I just walked through into a special kind of marathon.

That’s all fine. It is not getting into the way of my plans for 2011. There will be no February Funk.