2024: Embracing the Hard Things That Shape Us

2024 A Year in Review

At this point in my life, I am convinced that there will be no easier season than the proverbial "yesterday." Hardship does not equal suffering, but often it does. Suffering does not equal growth, but it almost always should.

The "last year" could have been great and terrible; mine was. A great year without any kind of challenge could be an unusually great gift, almost a miracle. But two in a row, without challenges, likely mean you are in a comfort zone.

Comfort zones are not great. They make us sluggish, inflexible, and fixed in our ways, often to the peril of others. You could choose great but will not move until you find perfect. Therefore, you do not move at all. You stay in comfort and say to yourself, "I will do it at the right time."

In this spirit, I can say I am thankful that 2024 likely provided a smaller dose of challenge compared to what 2025 will bring. I am also thankful for the growth.

A woman gives birth through pain, but most pain gives way to joy at the moment the child is born. And quickly, after some days, or months at worst, all is forgotten, and healing follows.

Death will bring deep sadness and void, a profound sense of life’s fragility. The closer you were and the better the person was, the greater the pain. But with time, your sorrow will give way to an appreciation of the time, moments, and experiences lived together.

All struggles, challenges, and successes should make you more empathetic toward others.

Choose the hard things in life. Be in that place that does not check all the boxes but is good for you. Do not be so fixed in your ways; make room for others in your agenda. Find the good in the hard. Selflessly serve others. And more importantly, treasure memories with your loved ones.

Hope you are off to a great start to the year!

Minimal Time Control

I have spent the better half of the last year focused on taking care of what I consider the four pillars and existential priorities: spiritual growth, being in shape, family quality time, and financial stability. All are needed for a well-rounded life balance.

The better and more work you do in taking care of these in your early years, the better off you will be in your later ones. In some aspects of those, I am reaping good fruit; in others, I am lacking.

Lesser priorities should yield or surrender time to more important ones when there is an imbalance or when more effort is demanded. The only way to gain more time back is to cut your time expenditure on something else.

Personal joys of mine are music, sports, travel, adventure, craftsmanship, and continuous learning, all good and great, but not necessities. Some of these intersect with the main four pillars. For example, continuous learning is good for career growth (financial stability), and sports could be closely tied to physical shape. But they are not one and the same.

Giving myself time to paddle may consume precious two or more hours, and as much as I would like this, I cannot justify it right now. But I can justify 30-minute workouts.

There is much profit in small, consistent, focused time. Simply put, minimal time control is giving utmost priority to the four pillars and reducing them to the minimum you need to do to keep nurturing them in a consistent and manageable way.

The rest of your desires need to surrender time or be momentarily eliminated from your life until you reach a more stable situation in all other priorities.

The Blog and Writings

Putting my thoughts in written form is a great learning process. It helps me to be more introspective, structured, and communicate ideas coherently. All this is valuable, but mostly, if not entirely, only for me.

I hope some of it is of value to you as a reader, but in retrospect, I have my doubts. At least in the current format and with the current consistency, I suspect this is the case.

Through the last two years, I have tried several formats, not quite figuring out yet how to achieve consistency in my delivery while navigating this new season as a husband and father. I write more and better now than I did two years ago when I started, but I cannot pin down consistency in delivery.

I will try to explain in more depth in another post why I regard discipline so highly and why I will simply not quit trying to achieve it in my writings (and other areas). In a race or sport, which I participated in for many years, consistency gets you far ahead of most, though not all. Competitions, races, and similar activities are perfect for setting foundational frameworks to strive for consistency in all you do. It creates discipline.

I will fall back to the format of writing that first got me interested in starting a blog. I will strip down this blog to its minimal existence in the hope of first looking inward, achieving consistency through simplicity, making it better, deeper, and sustainable. No promises on how often, or added perks to add subscribers.

I would rather deliver good reads than feel the need to meet a quota because the latest marketing study says to do so. I encourage you to stay tuned or unsubscribe. Your time is precious, and if you do not find value in the upcoming writing, you should consider not receiving my emails anymore, as they might be another distraction from using your time on better things.

Until the next one!
J