Wow — what a decade.
For me it was a fast ten years. My forties whizzed by. Mostly good. A quick review:
Highlights
- Being a dad/watching my child grow up.
- Staying happily married.
- Developing a daily writing habit and improving my craft.
- Becoming a published science fiction author.
- Continuing to make music with my friends.
- Recovering my physical and mental health after some rough patches (gastritis, insomnia, anxiety-depression).
- Developing and implementing an investment plan and getting richer, achieving a level of financial security.
Self-knowledge/lessons learned
- For me, slow and steady is almost always the best approach. Occasional sprints are fine, but only with sufficient rest and relaxation in-between. Trying to maintain a “push” pace for extended amounts of time isn’t worth it for me, and just leads to chronic stress.
- I need a lot of exercise to feel my best. Multiple hours of walking every day, strength exercise almost every day, and ideally some kind of competitive sport at least once a week (the latter which I have sorely missed during pandemic).
- What feels to me like a minor expression of anger can read much larger/angrier to others, so I need to carefully control this (especially around my kid — big parenting lesson).
- Daily meditation, even for very short amounts of time, yields outsized results (in terms of emotional clarity, creative inspiration, and stress reduction).
- Creative expression (writing and/or music) is essential for my mental health, regardless of if those efforts lead to any kind of external success (getting published, sales, reviews, etc.).
What I’m aiming for this coming decade
- Being a good dad, husband, son, friend, and citizen (being loving, kind, empathetic, loyal, strong, helpful).
- Getting better at writing and making music.
- Creating one or more “hits” — creative work that deeply connects with a very large number of people.
- Getting physically stronger, improving my health.
- Achieving financial freedom (a level of wealth that enables more travel, majority of income from passive sources, ability to donate large amounts to favorite charitable causes, a few luxury items).
- Doing what I can to improve my country (less political corruption, more public wealth/investment, more critical thinking and evidence-based governance).
What about you, kind reader? What were the highlights of your last ten years? How will you make the next decade a great one?