This Year

by



We have been in 2014 for two weeks now and I have wanted to put together my thoughts and feelings about 2013 but I just couldn’t figure out a concise way to say all that I want to say; you know like a short and sweet post that encompasses the highs and lows of the year and then ends with an uplifting bit about the greatness that is bound to ensue in this next year. But, I struggle with short and concise. See, even my first sentence was a long-winded run-on…

My second semester here at this little University has just begun, my required course books are coming in one by one, I’m thoroughly reading through every syllabus, and I’m starting to get overwhelmed with it all. I have one class on Mondays and it is my political science major’s upper division writing course. In my professor’s lecture she included in her powerpoint a quote by William Strunk Jr that is meant to convey the type of skills we would be polishing throughout the semester,

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”


This is what I want to do. I want to be clear and concise. I want to say what I need to say, write what I need to write, and edit and delete certain words, ideas, and actions that do not coincide with the thesis of my life. This year I want to think more about the little everyday decisions that slowly shape the person that I become, or how I am perceived, received, and treated; the everyday actions that start to sway my life and steer it away from my thesis. Just a few wrong words can change the whole meaning of your paper; similarly, a few small actions and decisions can shape the direction of your life. This year I want to be intentional; I want all my words, steps, thoughts, breaths, and dreams to matter and to all refer back to my thesis. 

I want my 2014 to have a series of never-ending commas when I’m describing all the wonderful people that enter into my life, regretless periods at the end of all my days, ellipses when I know that I’m not in the right mindset to have certain conversations, thousands of exclamation marks—some randomly added just because life is that good(!), confident question marks when I ask the silly questions, the gross questions, the important questions, and most importantly, the hard questions, new paragraphs for every twist and turn and wonderful unexpectedness, and colons when I’m listing out all the things that God has blessed me with. This year I want to hold to my thesis. I know even in my idealistic mind that I will trail off, that I will have sections that don’t match my thesis, I know that I’ll say and do things that I would be ashamed to ever write down, but I know more still that God is my editor and that he will mark up my 2014 with all kinds of corrections, and that the red grace of Jesus will correct all of my errors and mistakes and make my 2014 beautiful, clear, concise, and support my thesis.