Well it’s been a good three months (that’s bad) since last I wrote here, so any summing up of the year gone by seems redundant.

I can still wish you and yours a Happy New Year, however.

And I do, with health, prosperity, and all of the other things in life that we wish for at the turn of the calendar, without knowing exactly how we’ll achieve them. I wish these for you much as I wish for my own improved writing regime, without having committed to any particular regiment or understanding quite where I would want such a routine to take me.

The week between Christmas and New Year is always prime time for reflection and commitment to self improvement. The talk can be talked but we can put off that exhausting business of the walk until the first day of January, party-coma permitting, or perhaps the first full day of our return to business as usual.

Wherein lies the paradox, as most resolutions are revolutions, to which “business as usual” is anathema.

Embracing Week Zero

With some exceptions, most of us have some time to kill during the odd week of holiday hangover and required revelry. The first day of the year is always a holiday (two days, if you’re Scottish) and those that follow often fold into the weekend, making Monday again the fall guy for all the

In any case, we have time to spare in what I’ll call “week zero.” 

As attractive as using this period to binge-view the latest season of [insert outstanding TV series I missed from 2014 here] is, I prefer to eke out every last second of uninterrupted time putting in place the building blocks for the weeks and months to come. All of those tiny yet personally important tasks that you expect to be pulled from as the masses return from the festive excess next Monday? Week zero is the perfect pre-remedy to get some of them done.

For me, part of that process is writing more regularly for myself, which I want to mean more writing for – and a reimagination of – this site. In my daily role as a digital marketing consultant and content creator I write thousands of words and publish several articles  every day. While this satisfies my productivity (and bank balance), it does little to develop my personal profile or aid those who can’t afford to keep an outsourced marketing arm of their operation on retainer.

Which brings us back to 2015 and regular writing…

The original raison d’être of Above the Static was to help ambitious creators stand out from the crowd, and it remains so today.

My attempts in the past to channel only very specifically useful articles through these pages have kept content sparse and life-writing limited, so this year I’ll take another tack. That daily writing will happen one way or another, whether it be a full article (or rant, or remedy) here, or more truncated text on an outpost like Linkedin, Google+, or even Twitter (if it’s 23:59 and I’ve failed to publish everywhere else).

All of which is to say, Happy New Year! I look forward to writing to you more in 2015.

(And if you have to make resolutions, I urge you to start small and build, rather than go big and burn out. That way hopefully you can avoid this begin again, again cycle that can easily creep in to a twelve month cycle.)