2022 - Year of Experience

The Theme System

In case you have missed it back in 2020, I’ve decided to switch from the usual goals for a year to a theme. Yes, there are areas for measurement for success in some of these areas. But the reason behind the theme is its flexible and can be adapted to many different things. Its more about making choices and having some momentum towards a certain change in my life that I’d like to make. If you would like more on setting a theme for a year or season, I suggest you check out The Theme System or watch this quick video from their page:


2022 - Year of Experience

Well this is pretty damn broad, what the heck are you talking about?

The short description is this, “To live in the moment, to try and discover new things both personally and professionally .”

When you have three kids, 2 of which are still pretty young at 5 years of age, trying new things can be challenging. They’ve never been to this or that, how will they react? Oh no, I don’t want to deal with that chaos in my life doing this… Do you know how much work it will be to do X? All of these are valid concerns and often justified that we say no to when we are running at that red line.

While part of this theme is I want to find myself saying yes to more things, it also means saying no or stopping myself from doing other things. What are the bad habits or time killers that are currently in my life that I can cut out?

What got me here?

I think we can all agree, 2020 and 2021 have been a fucking shit show. Pandemic, politics, division, quarantine, mandates, burnout, working from home. Its been a struggle. Mentally, people are fried. Add in the complexity of a child with special needs and health concerns with the pandemic, it can put you in a bad mental space pretty quickly. We’re in a rut and we don’t know the way out so its easier to say no than to say yes to try something new.

The only way out is up.

So that’s what I’m going to try and do. This is not a magical, its now January 1st and everything is awesome. That’s no where close to being the case.

But, slowly, methodically, with a little bit here and there, I think we can lay the foundation to make the seemingly impossible, possible.

Some of this will involve cutting out the crap that is taking up time in my life. There are some bad habits that give me less energy and suck away time that could be better spent with family, friends, learning new things that I get a lot of joy out of. The goal here is to take advantage of those moments and do something with it. Be in the moment when I need to be in the moment vs on my phone or distracted with something else.

There will be hectic times for work, there will be hectic times with the kiddos. There will be crazy issues that we’ll need to deal with that will suck our energy. There will be moments where we just need to pull the ripcord and get the hell away for a while. If anything, we need to force some of those moments and make them happen.

What would I like to see…

  • Saying yes to more things
  • Being fully present in those times
  • Learning a new skill
  • Taking a vacation as a family to somewhere out of state / country
  • Better work / life balance
  • Cut the crap (Cut out the bullshit time killers in my life)

What is the plan?

I don’t know what I don’t know yet. I think the first step is taking that inventory of what is taking up some of the time in the day that is killing off the motivation. Killing off the energy, killing off the spark that I have for a lot of things. Figuring out what are the ruts that I’m currently working in and figure out how to get out of them.

Let’s do this!

A wise man named Bob Byrnes once said…

Whatever you do in your life, you have to work really damn hard to make it special.

Time to go to work.