All the things I want to know in 2023

New years always feel like new beginnings, and opportunities to learn. Photo by Dapo Oni on Unsplash.

There are many things I want to know in the new year. Things I haven’t learned yet, and a new year is always a good reason to try something new. Or to learn something new.

I want to know why we still work more than we do anything else in life. I get it. Productivity helps us move forward. We are creators, innovators, people of ideas. I’m sure most of the most significant advancements of society were hatched by overworkers, thinking, thinking, and thinking late into the night.

Let those people think, and overwork. We need those people, but it’s not for me. I like to work too, always have. When I was 16 years-old, my parents told me that I was old enough to get a job, so to go get one. A few days later, I was taking orders at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I haven’t stopped working since then. From fast food to housekeeping, auto glass repair, taxi driving, teaching, and writing, every experience has been worthwhile and edifying.

There is something to be said for working hard and going the extra mile, until you taste what life is like outside the office. Walking around the park on an autumn afternoon when you are home early enough to see the sunset. Getting up late, turning on the percolator, and just sitting and listening to the bubbling sound of a new day beginning. I’d like to do more of that.

I want to know why it takes us so long to decide on the little things. I was reading an obituary the other day of a lady who lived to be almost 100 years of age. Born here and raised there, worked for them, and then for someone else. Important details, but where she really came to life was who she was as a person in her free time. Her success in growing a garden. Her volunteer work with several organizations. Her spontaneity in traveling when she felt it was time to see something new. Living in the moment and realizing that moments are not infinite.

We take too long to make life decisions in a life that is too short for us to take the time to decide on things.

In 2023, I want to know why it’s so hard to believe in things. In big things and little things. In the kind of things that are obviously believable and in those things that seem utterly unbelievable. We don’t believe in…