My normal perspective on the ‘New Year’ is that it’s just another day, and in that regard tomorrow will be the same. Yet there is plenty that I learned this year that is noteworthy, and today is as good a day as any to be thoughtful about it.

Friendships.

I’ve seen friends come and go, and old friends rise from the ashes of time to return. Good friends, you see, do not disappear – they simply go on their own paths a while, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll eventually meet them again and it will be as if you had only seen them yesterday.

I lost friends this year to death, to their own character, and to different paths. The ones I lost to death I am fortunate with because they left behind people in their wake that are of worth, and who bear the mark of their own friendships. That’s the way of things, and there is no better or worse about it.

When it comes to those lost to their own character, there is little to be said about it. Perhaps I am too set in my own ways, but when people show me who they are with their actions, I do not ignore it. I generally ask a few questions or observe a bit longer, but some people aren’t friends anymore, and sometimes they never were. Those are the ones I celebrate leaving because they free me to meet new and interesting people.

The different paths aspect is a constant in my life. In some respects, I am a traveler and the people I have met over the years are generally also travelers; I have more in common with those that explore ideas and thoughts than those that stay in one place, comfortable in accepting what is around them.

One thing I have taken to saying this year is that while people may be traveling in the same direction, their destinations may be different. They must chart their own courses, and while you have them learn what you can from them.

Imagination

My imagination and I have reconnected, though this world conspires against it. Part of it was related to sleep. Part of it was related to mindset, part of it was related to some of the wrong people being around me and filling my head with their static drudgery.

You know the sort of people. The ones who age even though stuck in time, not having grown and depending on the growth of others to pull them along.

This has opened up worlds of possibility in my mind which I have been researching and writing about using some groovy new software. The act of buying software itself was a leap, it was actually more feeling than rationality. I dreamed of what I needed, I took a leap, and I got lucky and I must say that the words are flowing much better than they once were.

A lot of this has to do with the present state of artificial intelligence, too. While it’s all mainly statistical models and probability that gives us what we want, what is being marketed as artificial intelligence is allowing me to connect things in new and interesting ways, which I hope to publish more of either on my websites or in books.

Personal Growth.

Any actual adult that has been adulting for some time will tell you that being an adult is not very fun. It isn’t. Because of the way I grew up, I only maybe had about 10 years of childhood before I was working and dealing with things that are commonly problems of adulting.

In that, I picked up some scar tissue along the way, as we all do, but this year my former psychologist told me I wasn’t insane. Granted, that’s not quite the same as being sane, but I’m of the firm opinion that no one is actually sane. Questions I had about myself that I couldn’t really fathom I did get some help with, and I was fortunate to have found a great psychologist who was good at gently nudging me along my introspection and empowered me on some things by allowing me to say things out loud that I never knew I needed to say out loud.

Oddly enough, bonsai was a large part of my personal growth as well. There are a lot of metaphors in bonsai that apply to life, and you don’t learn it in a class. Some things need to sit in a clay pot to get back to them, some things need more trimming and attention than others, all need different things to grow and, most importantly, you cannot make something do what it cannot do.

You can, however, do amazing things by letting things tell you what they want to do, and what is possible.

And so, from the regular readers and subscribers to this blog, I would like to thank you for showing up and reading. For those that just stop in, I hope you found what you were looking for or even better, found things you didn’t know that you were looking for.

2024 will not be better or worse, really. We can make ourselves better, and I’d encourage you all lean toward becoming better versions of yourself, as we all should aspire to.