A year ago I wrote:
I’m kind of tired of looking back at years and feeling like I haven’t accomplished anything. I’d like to think this is the last time I’ll have to do that. I’d like to think that sometime I can live in a Tom Petty song other than “Walls.”
I’m not sure what song it is now. Tom’s not exactly full of happy songs, so I suppose in a sense I leapfrogged the Tom Petty catalog entirely. But otherwise that seems to have turned out pretty well. 33 treated me better than I could have imagined. I’ve been ridiculously productive, and I continue to get more so. Photography has taken off, songwriting has begun to move forward, and I’ve been slowly but steadily writing fiction, and improving my volume, for the last ten weeks. I’m beginning some other things behind the scenes which I hope will come to fruition in the new year. Even the winter has been relatively mild for me, so far everything is just slow, rather than the massive collapses that have characterized recent years.
It’s just been well, and the key for 34 is to maintain it, to move it forward, and not to develop too high expectations for myself. That looks reasonable from here. So far I’ve managed to gain productivity without gaining corresponding stress levels, and I need to be careful to continue that, and avoid my past tendency to get in over my head. As of now, I’m very optimistic, not just for this coming year but for making this change stick well into the future. I don’t want to go back to where I was, and I think I’m equipped for that.