10:18 pm - 01.07.2009
Ready For Commitment

For weeks, maybe longer, much of my thinking has centered around "plans", and "resolutions", and "affirmations" for the new year.

My therapist has suggested, a number of times, making a plan for 2009. My friend Kristie gave me sample resolutions I could make (They were really more like "affirmations", but "six of one, half-dozen of the other", I guess), advising me that, whatever I came up with, I should definitely write it down.

And on some level, it has seemed important that I "write it down", that I "resolve" to do things differently this year, that I "plan" what I'm going to do to make this year different - and better - than 2008.

And on another level?

I don't want to.

Why not, you ask?

It could be because planning is hard and makes my brain hurt.

It could be because if I make "plans", if I write out "resolutions", if I "affirm" what I'm going to do differently in 2009, it will be that much more painful and embarrassing when I fail.

It could be...but it isn't.

Fact is, I know what I want to do this year. I know what I want.

And I've made "resolutions" before.

And I've been writing about what I've done, what I'm doing, and what I want to do, for over 25 years now.

It's never seemed to make much of a difference.

Talk is cheap. And writing isn't much more expensive.

Or as K Callan wrote in her most recent Actors Ink column:

Making lists of the things we are going to do is not commitment; it's list making. Commitment is action!

She also quotes my man Goethe, who I've quoted in here before (In part because I really like the quote in question. Also because it makes me seem much smarter and more learned than I really am):

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

It's time for me to actually commit to the things I want in life, so I can start getting "providence" moving in my direction.

Stay tuned.

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