Return to base

In between the last week of last year and a few days ago, when you had to settle back into your usual groove, you might have been compelled to take advantage of a blank agenda and outline for 2015 all those things you didn’t quite fit into 2014. It’s January after all, time to ring in the changes with wishes and, increasingly, juice detoxes. Here we go again with high expectations of wanting to start everything right.

But I’ve learned my lesson from past New Years, so I’ve stopped making resolutions. From recent experience, energizing yourself for the year ahead — or every day, for that matter — involves iterations, not big breakthroughs. So instead of attempting to alter my life with grand promises, I’ve chosen to chip away at specific bad habits.

INCREMENTAL BUT RADICAL

In place of declaring that I want to lose weight this year, for instance, I’ve focused on minimizing (not eliminating) the carbs, sweets and junk food that bring me so much joy. I’ve always been quite disciplined, but I’m also quite realistic. The deprivation of having nothing but kale and grilled chicken has sent me running to McDonald’s for relief on several occasions. More often than not, however, eating more healthily and exercising regularly make me want to continue doing so the following day. These enhancements may have been incremental, but the effect on my stomach, now flatter than it was months ago — cough — has been radical.

Little by little, I’ve also discovered that sometimes, living is not about the thrill of doing as much as you can. With a newsroom job, duties at a magazine and this column to attend to, I once took pride in being a fantastic time manager. I have since resigned from my news job to focus full-time on magazine publishing, the niche industry in which I started and one that still fascinates me.

SAGE ADVICE

Now that I’m no longer a slave to my regime, I don’t feel like a maxed-out Hong Konger anymore. It’s fascinating that what the British novelist Arnold Bennett said in his 1910 essay “How to Live on 24 Hours a Day” still rings true in 2015. On the pitfalls of living life to the full, he wrote, “Try not to become more and more obsessed by what you have to do next.”

James Russell Lowell, the most versatile of the New England poets during the middle of the 19th century, also offers sage advice for overachievers such as myself: “Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is a crime.” I was first taught these words during the first day of our Grade 8 literature class. Again it’s worth noting that time has only enriched its meaning, especially now, before normal distractions ease into view and yet another year unspools. 

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