Happy New Year!
If you’ve been reading these posts (my introduction post is here: https://resilientseeker.com/2025/04/08/the-resilient-seeker-series-trss-intro/) and following my journey that had begun eight months prior to that post, I’ve been recapping weekly about what I’ve done weekly, experienced, and learned from it. Now, for my 40th entry, it was the week of my 54th birthday and I was nine months sober.
Both New Years and Birthdays are times when we often celebrate, reflect, and look ahead. I don’t know if there is a prescribed ratio, but it seems that spending 10% of one’s time looking back to learn and to be grateful and 10% to look ahead to plan and be motivated for a ‘better’ tomorrow is about right in that it leaves you with 80% of your time to focus on your present.
Looking at my journals I was out walking, being positive, took in Stars Wars on a rainy May the 4th (be with you), celebrated Cinco de Mayo by making fajitas and listening to Sand Rubies my favorite Tucson band, saw the Easton Assassin, Larry Holmes, who was with friends at the table next to us in a pub after playing racquetball, and all of that happened before my birthday on the 8th. And Pope Leo, the first American Pope, was elected.
My 54th birthday started with a longer walk than normal before school. I went up to the cemetery where my father is buried, then to school. It wasn’t by design. I wanted a longer walk and I was nearby so I decided why not? After school walking home I saw a cardinal and again thought of my dad watching over me.
The student-art show was taking place so I went there at night before our Athletic Hall of Fame Committee meeting. At home that night I reflected on what a pleasant day it had been, the kids I worked with, the ones I saw at the Art Show with their parents, and the people I saw at our meeting. I did this while having a late dinner and watching the Princess Bride.
It was the first birthday since at least I was eighteen, and I’m not even sure about that, that I didn’t drink. I know I drank on my birthday throughout college, because it always coincided with finals week and was a good excuse to relax. After that I’m sure I had a glass of wine each year for dinner at the least to celebrate.
I didn’t miss it. I didn’t even think about it at the time, I was enjoying each moment. The grilling, the music, my day. I wasn’t thinking about what I didn’t do. I was focused on what I was doing and what I had done.
I wrote down ten “words to live by” which weren’t words, but phrases. Many of these were not new, but things I lived by for a long time.
- Perfect yourself daily
- Make haste slowly
- Sweat the small stuff
- Addition by subtraction
- If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it
- Memory is not a measurement or reliable
- Perception is reality
- If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will have 0% chance, if you know yourself and not your enemy, 50%, if you know both yourself and your enemy 100% chance of victory
- Build and maintain relationships
- Focus on what you can control, then what you can influence, and waste no time or energy on what is outside your control
I had considered these for most of my life. The list has grown, evolved and been revised time and again. Not my original work, mostly paraphrased from books, articles, and quotes I’d come across through the years.
The list is in no particular order, but as I write this I probably ought to consider a right order.
I could make a post on each of these, heck people write books on each, but they speak for themself.
As I reflected on my birthday, and again this morning on New Year’s Day, I’m pretty happy with how my life is going. I’ve embraced the journey and am better for it. Being good with enough and not demanding more has simplified my life and amplified my joy of it.
Do I have a resolution for this year? No. I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions and now they run counter to my perspective on goals. I did make one decision and that was to start my New Year being unproductive. I decided to simply enjoy the day. I’m going to read, write, think creatively, listen to music, watch a movie, have my pork, and splurge on an apple strudel that I just took out of the oven. I won’t regret a minute of it, instead I’m going to savor each moment of the first day of a New Year.
Thanks for reading and have a happy New Year!
Ross Raymond Nunamaker 