My goal this year is to make something meaningful every day.
Each year I’m stumped by the question “How Did You Make The World A Better Place?”, as posed by my New Years reflection ritual Year Compass.
I hate that my goal is to make the world a better place, to affect it in a meaningful way with my art, and that I still have to dig deep to answer this. So this year I’m doing things differently — I’m going to make the world a little better, a little more meaningful, each day.
How do I know if something is Meaningful? What does that even mean?
I’m using this in a somewhat loose setting. Meaningful could mean “Useful” or it could mean “Inspiring”. Maybe even “Interesting”, though I’m less sure about that. I think it has to encourage or somehow lift someone up.
Does sharing this count as meaningful? It’s useful for me. And MAYBE it will encourage someone else to do something else meaningful every day. So I’m counting it.
One Metric: It Has To Affect Others
I’ve been creating things for five years: Multiple feature film screenplays. Two book manuscripts. Comics, short films, animations. All great stuff, but most of it is sitting on my computer in script form waiting to be sold… which means it is not impacting anyone.
By the end of this year I want to look back and see that I had made 365 things that people can interact with. Creations that potentially will inspire and encourage. That live in the world instead of my hard drive.
Sometimes this will be done in person. Sometimes in an article. Or a video. Or maybe even a feature film. But it has to exist.
Maybe this will inspire someone else to join me on this challenge. Then I can put a big checkmark next to today, which would be awesome.