To the Lovers and the Dreamers,Happy New Year!

There's a great song line at the end of The Muppet Movie that I think is relevant this New Year. 

 

moviesonline.ca

Life’s like a movie,
Write your own ending
Keep believing, keep pretending
We did just what we set out to do –

As many of you may know, this year I took a big risk and left my family behind to try and finish my journey towards earning a PhD in anthropology. I also hope I can finish what I have set out to do. Becky will be home with the kids until the end of May sometime (hopefully). Much about this adventure is difficult and inconvenient and kind of lonely. I am trying to master a tricky language, conduct a viable project, write field notes every day, which will culminate next year in writing a dissertation and a few publishable articles. All the while I am clinging to the hope that my current course won't drive my family into poverty. Scary stuff, and it's easy to get discouraged at times. But overall I am doing my best to be optimistic about my prospects and am trying not to allow my usual paralytic perfectionist tendencies, my penchant for procrastinating, and my fear to get in the way of success. I hope the same for you all.

Like many of you this year I want to try some new things or at least trying to do old things differently --I have been thinking how change can be scary, the future is uncertain, and that nothing worth doing is easy. So instead of having a list of New Year's resolutions I thought it would be better to focus on the power of positive thinking. Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite urban fantasy writers (actually no genre fits but this comes close), shares some of his thoughts and best  wishes over several New Years below. I like what he says and his words resonate with things I have been thinking about. So instead of plagerizing his words, I thought I would provide them here unadulterated. 

To all the Lovers and Dreamers out there:

Happy New Year!

 View from my apartment in Nahuala

New Year Wishes by Neil Gaiman: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html

A decade ago, I wrote:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And almost half a decade ago I said:

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

And for this year, my wish for each of us is small and very simple.

And it's this:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.