By Troy Headrick
Those who regularly read my posts have likely noticed that I’ve been silent for several weeks. In fact, it’s been close to a month since I published my last blog.
Well, I’m back now and feeling strong and ready to go. I truly believe that my time away from writing gave me the opportunity to reflect and recharge.
We’re only a few days into a new year. Many people see the beginning of a new year as a kind of metaphor or impetus. That’s why so many people make new year’s resolutions. There’s something about the passing of an old year that makes us feel like we can move beyond old ways of living, feeling, and interacting with others. In a sense, a new year provides us with the opportunity to improve ourselves by being reborn.
I’ve noticed that I’ve had a spring in my step in recent days. That’s because I suspect that 2020 is going be an exciting period. In recent months (before this new year dawned) I had been feeling like something wasn’t right. I’d been feeling stultified, trapped, like I’d gone some ways down a street only to discover that it abruptly came to a dead end.
The older I get the more I understand the power of that all-knowing voice inside me that some might call intuition. When I was a younger man, I spent a lot of time listening to external voices—to what experts, advisers, family members, friends, society, and such would tell me. Many people “knew” how I should live my life and weren’t shy about doling out advice and/or passing judgment. Because I hadn’t yet developed a strong sense of who I was and what my values were, I let others make decisions for me and I simply followed along.
One of those things I truly value is the willingness to be open to the possibility of reinventing myself when it feels l like such a reinvention is needed. I now have this strong sense that I need to die to an old way of living so that I might be reborn in a new form. Otherwise, if I continue down the path I’ve spent the last four or so years on, I think it will be harder to feel good about the person I am and the shape I’ve taken.
One of my greatest fears in recent years is that I will become a kind of human fossil. (All around me, on a daily basis, I see people who are already “dead” even though they still walk around, take in oxygen, and appear, at least from the outside, to be alive.) I dread becoming set in my ways, of becoming rigid, of “dying” before I’m dead. One of the greatest ways to stay flexible, to foster that sense of excitement and wonder about life (that can dissipate as we grow older if we’re not careful), is to move beyond one’s comfort zone or to do something difficult—even take an action some might think of as risky. My wife and will be doing something difficult—perhaps even “dangerous”—this year. I’m not ready to announce what form that difficulty will take, but stay tuned.
Of course, doing something challenging will expand my horizons and provide me with new things to thinking about, perhaps even reactivating some parts of my mind that have more or less fallen sleep. It will help me bring some freshness to the writings I do for Pointless Overthinking.
So, I’ve said enough for now. I’d like to hear your responses to this piece…
Troy Headrick’s personal blog can be found here.