Moving forward + slowing down in 2022

5 quiet, daily New Year's goals

Hello friends, I hope this email really does find you well and your new year still fresh and open to possibilities. As you know, I love this time of year, when I’m daydreaming about what I want to accomplish in the next 12 months and putting the small, daily steps into place that (I hope) will get me there.

I have a big-picture goal for 2022 that I think a lot of you will share: I want to slow down. I’ve been hearing versions of this resolution over and over from fellow creators, makers and daydreamers — slowing down, becoming more thoughtful about where our time and energy goes, and connecting better with ourselves, with great stories, and with other people in the process. You probably have your own list (and please reply to this email if you’d like to share), but I wanted to list the practical steps I’ve been implementing in the hopes that they inspire you too.

I’m keeping a reading journal.

More on this to come in my next newsletter as well as a new upcoming season of my book podcast, but I’ve started keeping a reading journal for the first time. I preordered Anne Bogel’s delightful reading journal and received it back in September, planning to start recording my reading life on its crisp pages in the new year. But as I’ll talk about in the first episode of the new podcast season, I started it sooner and I’m very glad I did! I’ve been a lifelong reader, but I’ve never recorded more than a list of titles. Jotting down a few notes (already set up in a great format, thanks to My Reading Life: A Book Journal) is a gentle encouragement to be more thoughtful about the books I pick up, and it’s already shaping my reading life for the better.

I’m doing Morning Pages again.

As I’ve mentioned in basically every newsletter from the past two and a half years, Julia Cameron’s creative course The Artist’s Way changed my life. I faithfully did Morning Pages for years but took a break for the last several months as I tried to figure out why they stopped being a helpful tool. Writing out three stream-of-consciousness pages made me feel frantic, not refreshed. I realized that I was rushing to get out those pages so I could go on to do my real writing for the day, trying to check off this task as quickly as possible. I was staying on the surface of my thoughts instead of slowing down just enough to go deeper and untangle the real worries and dreams and fears and hopes that were filling my mind. This time around, I’m doing Morning Pages as part of Cameron’s Walking in This World follow-up and working to find that balance between freely getting down whatever thoughts are in my head and slowing down to really listen.

I’m recording one daily moment from my Scripture reading and prayer life.

One important thing that gets lost in the everyday sea of decisions to make and tasks to check off and media to consume and texts to answer is my need for daily Bible reading and prayer. It’s on my to-do list, but I forget, or I do remember, and then the chapter I read evaporates and I don’t realize the next day that I’m just reading the same exact chapter over again. I needed a small attainable goal, so for now, I’m jotting down one verse from my reading that spoke to me, and one or two sentences to capture my prayer life that day. It’s such a baby step, but I hope it keeps me moving forward little by little.

I’m revising a manuscript.

I wrote Something last year that I loved (and still love), and it finally got me through the mental and creative blocks that were keeping me from being able to revise my fiction writing. Slowing myself down enough to stay with a manuscript instead of setting it aside to write a new thing and then another new thing after that is a huge step forward (or rather, a lot of small daily steps forward) for me.

I’m *not* writing ahead.

This might be the hardest practical step for me to take. I love writing newsletters for the next several weeks (or even months), feeling a sense of accomplishment and preparation as I see that list of neatly scheduled posts. But I know if I’m going to share my creative journey with you, I need to be writing about it in something much closer to real time, so my resolution for this year is not to write newsletters very far in advance.

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As always, thanks for being here, and feel free to reply directly to this email to share your own creative resolutions for 2022.