Hooks, hopes and habits

At both our house and cottage, we use hooks to hang our clothes. Sure, we have closets, but hooks keep the clothes handy by where they’re needed and, added bonus, we can see what is available within easy reach. This habit of clothes management is not sophisticated, but it works. I plan my day’s outfit (a term I use only loosely for my sartorial style) by what’s still on the hooks and not yet dropped into the laundry basket.

As I have been pondering the end of this year and the beginning of the next, I have realized that my planning for the coming 12 months is not dissimilar to how I plan for the day’s clothes: I use a hook. I have a broad objective. And I’m prepared to pinch hit with what’s available, as needed.

The hook is a word (or several, maybe) that guide me in the broadest sense. I don’t want to be tied into a master plan that can’t be amended along the way, but I equally don’t want to wander through time without any sense of direction. For 2022, I chose the word ‘plan’, meaning ‘don’t leave important things to chance’: Think about them, put some pins in place to enable them to happen, and follow through.

The broad objective this year has been to ramp up my writing and to get it out into the broader world. Write, polish, submit, repeat.

Any plan is only a theory that, when put into action, may — probably will — need amending. This is where the pinch hitting comes in. The commitment I made this year was to be deliberate in a particular area of my life; it wasn’t a commitment to box myself into a single lane. I didn’t write every day, nor did everything I write find a home somewhere. But, broadly speaking, my writing time increased, my output grew, and my work appeared twice in The Globe and Mail, twice in Brevity Blog, and once on the Jungle Red Writers blog.

I’m ending this year content with my approach and pleased with my results. Next year? I’m hatching a similar strategy. Metaphorically speaking: I intend to keep my clothes on a handy hook so that dressing is straightforward and I don’t need to reinvent my approach every day — that is such a time waste and energy suck; I want to preserve both (time and energy) for more important things. My broad objective will be to be clothed as I enter the day — ready to pinch hit with what comes my way. Sure, I could reach into my closet and dress myself brand new each day, but that would waste both my time and energy —  and I have more important things to do with my days than invent new outfits for myself. I’m happy to see what’s on my hooks, clothe myself with what’s there, and get on with the important matter of making my time count.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.