Hello, Friend. Welcome to my wormhole. Each year, I do this “Completing and Remembering [year past], Creating [upcoming year]” exercise—well, I do it ever since my brother gave me the worksheet five years ago; before that, I simply wrote out a list of things I wanted to accomplish in the coming year and a few words about how well I’d done in the year previous. 

Picture it: Jan. 3^rd, I’ve finished the “Completing and Remembering” worksheet and like last year, I’m going to blog about it. I want to blog about it because it scares me to tell people what my goals are, but once I tell them, I’m Rocky Balboa. CHAMPION! 

So, it’s Jan. 3^rd. I log into this WordPress site, jacked—wait, what’s that in the top left corner? Updates. My site and its plugins need updates.

I click through to Updraft, to back up my site before running the updates. Might as well do that first, right? Don’t want to lose the blog post to plugin bugs after I write it.

MANY MINUTES PASS.

This is taking longer than I thought. I guess I’ll get my client sites backing up, while I wait, and get their updates done, too.

AN HOUR PASSES.

Oh. My Dropbox is full. I can’t back up any more sites and my own somehow got pre-empted by one of my clients’. What was my Dropbox password? Anyway, I can delete the oldest backups for my sites and make room via Updraft. 

Oh. There’s still not enough room. What was my Dropbox password? I’ll have to finish this later. I have appointments.

A DAY PASSES. 

I remember my Dropbox password, get in and delete some files but it’s still not enough. Two of my sites are backed up though. I’ll run updates on them. 

AN HOUR PASSES. 

I have other things to do so I leave this work to finish later.

ANOTHER DAY PASSES. 

Where was I? Oh, yes, backing up and updating web sites. I have another Dropbox account. I wish I could remember what email address I used to create it. 

Somehow, I get confused and update the Updraft settings in my own web site instead of my client’s. Oh well, I’ll now back up my site and this last client site to the new(ish) Dropbox account. 

HOURS PASS.

I have things to do so I’ll leave this to finish later.

A THIRD DAY PASSES. 

What was I doing? Oh, yah, the blog post, “Creating 2020.” 

Apprehension grips me. I’ve been punched by Updates! Forgotten passwords! Full Dropbox accounts! OOF! I’m weak—steady, Malcolm, do the blog post. 

But it’s dumb. It’s a dumb—

Shut up. 

But—

Just do it, Malcolm. 

Friend, here are my goals for 2020:

Creating (2020)

One outcome I would like to have in 2020: finish my entire Do the Wrong Thing series.

This is important to me because: I want to finish what I started.

Ask yourself at least 3 more times why it is important to you. This is important to me because:

1. It’s hard, I’m bored, but want to finish what I started.
2. It’ll be quite an achievement—a lot of words!
3. I can work on turning it into a TV show.

Speculation: take the last answer you arrived at and look from there. If it were fulfilled, what would your work and/or life look like at the end of the year? If you got what you wrote, and got it fully, what would be there at the end of the year that is not there now?

My work and life will be unrecognizable from what it is now. I’ll need an incredible amount of faith and courage: it’ll be like jumping from a plane and I’ll have to trust that what feels like play or “not working” IS work, and that it will pay off. 

I will suffer extreme insecurity, to the point where I feel depressed; aka, I’ll feel like giving up, but I won’t have a choice because I put myself out there and will know that now, I have to at least try/go through the steps/go through the work, not thinking of what the outcome will be. 

If I work on turning my completed book into a TV show, what will be in my life that is not there now will be fear, terror and the knowledge that I’ve confronted them before and achieved great joy from that. I’ll remember that the fear and terror are always there but by doing what I want anyway, they become smaller and less powerful and scary. I’ll expand my circle of friends. I’ll be working with others on my goals. I’ll have to take a lot of chances, with eyes glued on the ultimate goal of creating a TV show.

Allow yourself to speculate and make note of several outcomes (try to list at least 10). The more specific they are, the better. And, don’t try to settle on one at this point.

1. A company or producer offers to make the TV show for or with me.
2. I’m hiring actors and technical people.
3. I’m working with other directors.
4. I’m trusting other creatives to enlarge and enhance my vision to make it better.
5. I’ll argue with people without assuming that a different point of view means they don’t like me. I’ll have learned to give the people around me freedom to be individuals separate from me. And I won’t feel lonely, I’ll feel calmly excited.
6. The people around me will be like glittering jewels, mischievous pets, fantastic Pokemons or characters from a Studio Ghibli cartoon but then they’ll become 3D and real, which will lift me emotionally and spiritually.
7. There will be a lot of people calling, emailing, texting with offers, messages of gratitude and requests for help.
8. I’ll have to entrust some of my correspondence to someone or someones while I focus on more things that can help people, and make them deeply happy, inspired and courageous.
9. Several specific close friends will become confident, strong and sure of themselves. Their children will grow by leaps and bounds.
10. My partner will quit his job to work on things that matter most to him. He’ll have that confidence.

One, two or three outcomes from the above list that most represent the fulfillment of what is important to me:

1. Helping people while being respected as powerful.
2. Caring for others while still commanding big budgets and workforces.
3. Teaching people how to make their dreams their reality.

This step adds the greatest amount of empowerment to this process. Get out your calendar and schedule times to do those things that will result in your achieving the outcome you selected. At this time you may not know all that needs to be done. However, if you have time scheduled, you can reflect and determine what actions are appropriate at that time.

1. Two hours of writing per day = finish the Do the Wrong Thing book series.
2. Create a thumbnail of Do the Wrong Thing TV show in Rene’s ten week course. *this isn’t going to happen, so apply to one of Wet Ink Collective’s courses.
3. Add another hour of writing per day to finish the book series.
4. Cut down housecleaning schedule to free up more time. Work on a three-week schedule rather than two, doing surface cleaning only on the third week. (If you come to my house, don’t look under the furniture.)
5. *I should probably seek reading opportunities since I enjoy presenting as much as I do but I won’t put this before doing the actual creation of material.

Phew, that was hard. Thanks for reading.

*Yak-shaving: to perform a series of seemingly meaningless tasks before you can get to the task you really want or need to do. https://medium.com/machine-words/yak-shaving-and-bikeshedding-e3052f51234a

NOTE: Many people have asked me for the “Creating Upcoming Year” worksheet. Here it is. If you recognize it, please let me know where it originally comes from so I can link to the author.