I’ve listened to Mike and Grey talk about their yearly themes since 2017, but this year I’ve finally felt motivated enough to commit to a theme.

If you don’t have the time to listen to dozens of hours of podcast episodes, Grey has a great video explaining “yearly themes”:

2020 was a rough year for more than just the pandemic. My parents were diagnosed with cancer. I felt like my life stopped as my attention focused on their care. Mom recovered: dad didn’t.

With my father gone, I picked up the pieces for my mom and helped with all her issues. I deprioritized myself and began to languish. Days spent working as nights devolved into mindless Youtube videos, endless refreshing of my RSS feeds, and bite-sized articles saved to Instapaper.

I created nothing.

After almost three years of this same grind, I can’t keep going on the same path. I started replacing Youtube with books and read almost 20 books since May.

While reading is better than watching, it’s not the same as making.

Therefore, 2023 is the year of creation!

Using Scriptable, I created a yellow sticky note in my phone’s today view to remind me of the year’s theme.

My years’ first act of creation: writing today’s post!