Now is the time to hone my compassion, my creativity, and my focus. It is a time to transform gifts that I have into gifts that I give, a time to depose petty urgencies from the throne of true priorities.

I will invest more into the essence of what I have to offer: articulating and sharing insights, seeing and creating ways, connecting, forging paths to peace, saying effects as a making of causes. At core, delivering sentences, with all the nuances and multiple meanings that such a phrase suggests.

And I will cut, piece by piece, the worry, the fear, and the sour harmony that comes from false accommodations. I will leave behind nothing but the bare core of what I believe and value, because with every increment of calendar and clock, there’s less time left.

With the year half over, I thought I would take a look at a resolution I made to myself on New Year’s Day, to see whether I’ve made any progress. If taking a hard look, I’d give myself a six, I suppose, or maybe a seven. With no measurable objectives, I left it all subjective anyway.

On balance, I’m writing almost every day, I’m finding new means to put what I want to say out into the world, I’m giving more of myself to the people I care about, and I’m giving a good deal less internal air time to pointless worries and accommodations.

So what’s missing? I need to do more of it, and speed up. And I need to focus on the outputs as well as the process.