An Experiment for the Coming Year | By Steven W. Alloway

I want you all to try something in the coming year. More accurately, I want me to try it, but I think it might be beneficial for others as well. Particularly if, like me, you tend to find yourself every December, looking back and thinking, “Just what did I DO this year?”

Here’s what I propose: Throughout the year, anytime you do something you’re proud of, do something to commemorate it. Not just a celebration, although those are important too. But beyond that, do something concrete and tangible that can serve as a reminder.

Photos work really well in this regard, but I find I often get so caught up in whatever I’m doing that I forget to take them. Writing it down in a notebook works well too, and it’s something you can do afterwards, rather than remembering in the moment. Or find some souvenir, keepsake, or trinket that will remind you of the thing you’ve done, whenever you look at it.

Whatever you choose, do your best to keep it consistent throughout the year and keep these records or remembrances all in one place, where they can be easily accessed whenever you want. Then, next December, as the year is drawing to a close, and that question starts nagging at you again—“Just what did I DO this year?”—pull out your list, or your photos, or your keepsakes, and look at them. There’s your answer. These are the things you did. These are the things that you were proud of. Aren’t they cool?

The Looming List

Last year around this time, I wrote a bit about the things I didn’t do. A year before that, at the end of 2023, I wrote a whole article about my goals, the big dreams I was planning on making into reality in 2024. And not a one of them came to fruition. Even the easy, “I’ll put that on the list because I know I’ll do it anyway” goal—somehow, I didn’t do that one either, the whole year.

2024 is hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened to me either. I recently found myself combing through old e-mails from 10-15 years ago, and I found a document labeled, “Spirit OnStage Goals 2011.” It was made in preparation for a meeting with my theater group at the start of that year, to outline the projects I wanted us to do.

There were eight items on the list, including, “Shoot a feature length film,” and “Write and mount a full-length book musical.” Of those eight items, one got done. A couple of others, we technically did, but not nearly to the extent that I had planned in the meeting. One or two things, we started but never finished. And the rest just didn’t happen at all.

So What Have You Done?

Of course, that’s not to say that I didn’t still do plenty of cool, creative things, in both of those years. In 2024, I wrote several plays; I directed a full-length, in-person puppet show for the first time; I performed for a retirement community in Fresno; I wrote a short story that got published in an anthology of time travel stories.

And in 2011… Well, I don’t really know. It’s been a very long time. I remember a couple of shows I did, one with Spirit OnStage and one with another group. I have vague recollections of a couple of other projects, which might have been that year or might have been another year. But I don’t have much else. The main thing I have, for 2011, 2024, and plenty of other years in between, is the lists: those beginning-of-year lists of things I wanted to accomplish. And no matter how much I actually got done in that time, it’s hard to look at those lists, of all the things I was so excited for, that never quite got done, and not feel like a failure.

Wherever the Wind May Take Us

So this year, I decided on a different tack. I wouldn’t set any specific goals. Instead, I would just go with the flow and see what happened. And you know what? It’s been an incredibly productive year. I’ve done so much cool stuff. It feels like I’ve done more this year than I typically do, though I’m not sure if I actually have, or if it’s just because I’m not comparing my accomplishments with an unfinished list.

At any rate, I’ve written plays, short films, stories, songs… I took a script I wrote years ago and remounted it as an immersive children’s show. I learned a couple of songs that nobody has heard or sung in 150 years, and taught them to the other members of my theater group. I helped produce a concert at my church by the inimitable Cortney Matz. And I also… I also…

Well, that’s the thing. It’s still hard to remember. There’s so much going on all the time, in the world and in our lives. Every year since 2020 has felt like at least five years. There’s joy and there’s sorrow; there’s tragedy and there’s triumph; and there’s everything in between. Time tends to blur together and events get lost in the shuffle.

Survival of the Pessimistic

It’s also true that our brains tend to be hardwired to remember the bad things better and more clearly than the good things. It’s a survival mechanism. If you encounter something dangerous, you need to be able to remember the harm it caused you, so that next time you encounter it, you know to avoid it. If all you remember is the good things, it opens the door for you to keep making the same mistakes, again and again. 

If, for example, you accidentally eat a poisonous mushroom, then your brain needs to hang on to the memory of how sick it made you and how long it took you to recover, and try to downplay the memory of how delicious it was at the time. If it did things the other way around, you’d probably end up eating the mushroom again—and next time, you might not be so lucky as to recover.

Unfortunately, our brains don’t always make the distinction between, “Harmful thing that wants to kill me,” and “Something that was a bummer and made me feel like a failure.” So it hangs on to those negative memories regardless, and the feelings that go with them end up crowding out the positive memories. 

If I may be very honest for a moment, I’m going through a bit of that right now. I know, logically, that I’ve done a lot of amazing things this year. I’m super proud of what I’ve accomplished. But the Christmas show I’m currently working on is turning out to be much more difficult than it should be. We’re facing an inordinate number of obstacles and setbacks, and it’s very difficult not to get discouraged.

So right now, when I think about other shows I’ve done in recent memory, I find I’m not thinking about the awesome children’s play I did in May that was one of the best theatrical experiences of my life, or the small but fun show I was in at the end of September where I got to use puppets, play that kazoo, do a swordfight, and more.

Instead, I’m thinking about the Christmas show I did last year, which was also fraught with logistical problems, casting difficulties, and other obstacles. I know, logically, that my group has had some amazing successes, but I can’t help but get bogged down in the failures.

And the thing is, last year’s Christmas show wasn’t even a failure, either. It didn’t turn out the way I had wanted it to, and it was rough getting to the finish line. But you know what? We still got there, and the audiences really enjoyed it. I had one friend just tell me recently, almost a year later, how much they liked last year’s Christmas show, and how much they were looking forward to seeing this year’s.

But our brains will remember things the way they want to.  That’s why it’s so important to keep track of your wins in the moment. Your brain is a dirty liar. You need the evidence to refute it. When you feel like all you’ve done is fail, or you feel like you haven’t done anything at all, you need to be able to look back and say, “This is what I did! I was proud of it then, and I’m proud of it now!”

For the Win

I’ve never really attempted this “making a list of wins as they happen” thing before, but I’m looking forward to trying it, and I really hope you’ll try it with me. We keep lists of our goals and our resolutions; doesn’t it make sense to have a list of our accomplishments, too? Especially when you’re looking at that list at the end of the year and seeing all the things you wanted to do, the things you were so excited about, that just didn’t happen.

And it’s not just helpful at the end of the year. There are times throughout the year when those tangible reminders can come in handy. Anytime you feel like you haven’t done anything worthwhile, you have proof that you have. Anytime you feel like you can’t do it, you have proof that you’ve done it before—maybe not this exact thing, but something else that was just as scary at the time and seemed just as impossible. You did it, and you can do this too. And then you can take a photo of it, grab a souvenir, and add it to the list.