New Year, New You?

I went a new-age church called Agape in LA for awhile when I lived there in my youth. And on the first Sunday after New Year’s one year the preacher said the following: No you new you, no new year! The people around me all nodded and said, ‘Amen.’ I did too. I was so taken with the idea of personal revolution that I bought a recording of the sermon and listened to it several times afterward. It was indicative of that particular time in my life. I was going through a lot of changes, personally and professionally. I had been trying to grab on to a new me even more regularly than every twelve months.

Looking back at that idea and trying to bring it into the now, I am no longer enamored with it. A whole new you is a lot of work. A brand new you is not something most can really achieve over the course of a single year this far into adulthood. That’s probably not what the preacher meant anyway – that we should attempt a complete remake of our souls every calendar year. That sounds like self-exploration taken to a level that’s almost violent.

It was easier to think and feel that such an inner shift was a good idea when I was younger. I think I was 21 when I heard that sermon. At that age the self can be pretty malalble. Older people will often look back at their late teens, early twenties and say things like, “Oh yeah, that was my punk year” or “That was the year I tried to be a _______.” It was probably not a whole year or perhaps it was a lot longer than a year. We look back and encapsulate it as a phase in our becoming.

All this is to say that it is a new year and there is not a new me. I am the same me that two months ago was struggling to write and be creative because I had far too many drains on my creative well. I am the same me that wrote the draft of a novel in the first three months of 2021. And I am the same me that has edited several times, submitted it to my agent twice, and not yet fashioned a draft tight enough to send out to publishers.

Therefore, it’s not a new me, it’s a new version of an old me. I am redrafting rather than editing. I am setting a goal of finishing what will be a vaguely less shitty first draft than the typical first draft by sole virtue of having had a predecessor or two in just six weeks. Will I fail? Probably. But better to set the goal and be gentle on myself than push it too far and leave myself open to further naval gazing. There comes a point with every story when you just have to put the words on the page. The bad and good. The old and the new.

Now, go have some fun with your writing.