New Year, New Beginnings?

It's that time of year again. The time when people celebrate the successes and lament over the failures they've had over the last year. Most of us take a moment to think about the year ahead, and all the brightness we hope it will bring.

One general theme that is present as the year ends is summed up by a catch-phrase that Nate has started to use: "New Year, New Beginnings." This is a great one for us, given that the year is ending with much of our lives in upheaval, and the prospect of starting fresh is incredibly appealing. Having many friends in the same position, I feel this gloom-to-optimism sentimentality all around. One has to wonder though, is this actually true? Is the New Year actually a New Beginning?

I am a big fan of retrospective technology these days. Using Timehop, Facebook, and Google, I am regularly reminded of what has come before. For the first time, as I looked back upon this year, I also looked back on this day- December 31st- for the last several years. Given my passion for startups it may be not entirely surprising that out of the last 10 New Year's Eves, I have been unemployed 5 of them. I was single for 7 of them. Each year, no matter what, I made a blog, status, or the like indicating how excited I was for the upcoming year. Each year- like so many others- I started out the year with a bang. New health, more passion, more action. Each year I moved leaps and bounds over where I was just a few days before. Despite this, so many of those years I ended up back in the same position. Looking back, the same thing has happened to so many others.

So back to the question. Are new years, actually new beginnings? If the patterns keep repeating, are we actually starting fresh? Moreover, is it helpful that we fall into the same cycle? Perhaps strangely, I think the answer is "yes."

I strongly believe the slightly annoying truth of the universe is that it proves what you need, not what you want. Humans are inherently creatures of habit, and often it takes times of darkness to move us from the grey our lives have become to the light that they truly can be. I think that we are inherently led towards change and upheaval towards the end of the year. Whether it is our sub-conscious, or a greater power taking a hand, the simple fact of the matter is that we need renewal, and so we get it- the kicking and screaming that may follow be damned.

Like nature- which must go through the winter and cycle of seeming lifelessness- so too must some aspects of our life wither or die in order for us to renew them or another aspect of ourselves. Ended relationships often create a renewed focus on ourselves. We're normally driven to be more healthier and look after ourselves. Many times we also renew the relationships with our friends that we may have neglected. Lost jobs force us to focus on our life and many times we see moments where we may have given up our passions in favor of our paychecks. These traumatic events can't- and shouldn't- happen all the time, but the renewal should.

New Year's Eve falls at a perfect time to create these feelings in us, even when things seem to be going well. We have just come off the holidays, which seem to almost always be an insane mix of happiness/nostalgia, and pain/angst. We get closer to our families and friends, while also realizing everything about them that drives us insane. It's a time of high stress, putting our relationships on a thin line, and our jobs more easily prove how much or little they seem to care about the people running their day-to-day. Is it any wonder that we always end the year looking for something better?

In short, New Year's Eve is a needed reset. It's incredibly valuable to take the time to reset ourselves. Even knowing that we'll likely do the exact same thing next year, and that we'll probably not do all the great things we set out to do starting tomorrow, its value is still absolute. Take the time to look back and see what you want to add to your life. See what you want to throw away. Become excited about the things that will change, but also work to ensure that what was amazing about the year isn't lost. Enjoy the roller coaster you rode in 2015, then be excited for 2016 and the roller coaster you know it will certainly be, new beginnings and all.

Hamilton I - Write Like You're Running Out of Time

Sometimes we see or hear something that moves us to inspiration. In the musical, "Hamilton," Lin-Manuel Miranda evoked powerful thoughts with both words and images. As such, this begins a series of thought posts derived from the show:

Writing. A single word that contains one of the greatest assets humanity has ever achieved. Its expression has shown us many of our greatest heroes and geniuses throughout history. Hamilton was one of those. His modern rendition says he "wrote like he's running out of time." Like so many others, the power of the written word was his greatest strength. It was through writing that he was able to truly help shape the nation. The power of writing exemplified.

Without writing we would have no true history, our ability to pass knowledge from one generation to the next would be limited to the words of our immediate elders. As society has advanced, so too has our writing. The printing press made our words extend to more and more people while advances in transportation allowed our words to reach the furthest corners of the world. The modern world took that to unprecedented heights with the advent of the internet.

The worldwide web created the ability for our words to be shared with the entire world in an instant. Our private correspondence can be shared with loved ones thousands of miles away without delay. The writing we want to share with the public can now be broadcast far and wide without cost and with unlimited range.

Such advancement has changed the very fabric of our communications, and yet the speed at which our writing has progressed over the last few decades has left us with little time to catch up. So many tools, so many places where the written word can be seen, and yet the question that must be asked, is what do we do with them?

In the time of the USA’s Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton made a name for himself almost exclusively through his writing. He wrote to support his own advancement then used that same skill on letters of entreaty to support the Revolution. When our country was being formed, he wrote thoughts into law, and then wrote essays and “papers” to garner support for the government being created, most notably with the Federalist Papers. Some say that he even wrote much of his own political downfall with the Reynolds Pamphlet.  Literally thousands of papers were written by this man and read by a nation in need of his words.  But what would all this look like if he lived today?

One of the greatest benefits to the technology of the written word today is our access to near unlimited amounts of information. Unfortunately, this is also one of its greatest weaknesses.  With access to so much information, it becomes that much harder to ensure that any single piece is read. Thoughts stream into the web in blogs, blurbs, and statuses and we are left with the nearly impossible task of sifting through it all. 

Technology has of course attempted to assist with this. We can use apps to feed us updates from specific sites of our choosing. Facebook works hard to show us things trending that also match our interests. But does this actually aid us or simply make it worse. Humans by nature are drawn to those who are most like us. Given the overwhelming amount of information available, it is easy to feel like all of the world agrees with us, despite the fact that we’re only accessing a select amount of the writing that exists. Our ideas more easily feel like facts that can become beliefs. Our bubbles can continue to get smaller and smaller without any real conscious effort. As such, even as our access to it increases, writing that moves us to an action that we otherwise wouldn’t have taken becomes more and more rarely read.

That doesn’t even touch upon our seemingly never-ending pursuit of the fastest and yet most exciting type of information… but that is a greater topic in an of itself. The fact of the matter is, that even the greatest writers face great challenges in having their thoughts and ideas brought to the fore. Even as a I write this- inspired by Hamilton’s passion and talent for writing- I am subtly aware that though billions of people in the world will have access to my words, only a handful will read them. Less will embrace the thoughts within them, and even less will be spurned into any sort of action.

Can a small voice be heard in a crowd of so many? One has to wonder how many geniuses are unheard through all the noise in the world. How many ideas and thoughts that could change the world are written into being only to be unseen amongst the deluge of the masses? Does the knowledge of this nearly insurmountable hurdle hold us back from “writing like we’re running out of time?” The idealist in me would like to think that it’s not so, but as I look back at my own history, and those of so many writers I know, I feel that the weight of making our word heard can certainly have its effect on us.

Is there any remedy to this conundrum? Is there a way for the Hamiltons of the future to make their mark with their writing? Is there a way for them to sway us with the power of the written word? Perhaps the answer is as simple as continuing to encourage as much reading and writing as we can. Perhaps society will adapt in a way that makes use of our tools without losing out on the brilliant thoughts of the individual.