Updated 14-Sep-2023
The coming new year, 2014 or 2557 in the Buddhist calendar, augers particularly well. This will be a horse year, and therefore I will be starting my fifth cycle (of 12 years), on my 48th birthday. This is a wood element year therefore helpful to my own fire horse.
With Age Comes Clarity
As well, with age there is some clarity. I continually forget things, but the recollections are speedier and more familiar. As with Peter Drucker I must first of all ask myself, What is the Task? And this becomes easier over time, as the 10,000 hours of the current adventure ticks off the clock and there is enough concrete experience to solidify and reflect upon.
Yet Unpredictability Reigns
There is an argument based on information theory, that things are becoming more unpredictable, not less. The reason is that as predictability is hammered out across human activities, the unpredictable becomes even more so, and therefore is catastrophic. Therefore we need to make even more not robust but antifragile.
Seven years ago I had no idea where I would be now, or what I would be doing (this is a common refrain in my end-of-year missives). What is needed in this circumstance is an antifragile trajectory. I'm not saying I have found it but continuing to look is more and more a part of what I do, and I believe that is what is needed.
Roadmaps, not Resolutions
This last year a nice multi-topic roadmap was very helpful in keeping me on track. In addition, I formulated a checklist which is a set of milestones for my life. I did about half of the roadmap (and other items not on it), so that was good. Another roadmap for 2557 is coming.
This puts in mind a Robert Frost poem...
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.