Welcome back, I hope you all had either a restful or exciting holiday, as is your preference. The beginning of January always strikes me as a bit of a strange time. Having just ended the month previous with a holiday, we should feel somewhat rested when it’s time to return to work, but often it is just the opposite.
Christmas/Boxing/New Year’s is one of the longer holidays we get in our society, and returning to work makes us realize all of the things we meant to get done, but simply didn’t accomplish over the last year. And so we resolve to do better. A resolution, in a way, is an acknowledgment of a failure from the past year. Perhaps that’s the “re” part of the word. We will try again to solve the problem that we obviously didn’t manage to solve over the last 365 days.
Unfortunately, most of us tackle those problems in the exact same manner that we attempted to tackle them the year before, and so we often wind up with the same results. Fortunately for you, however, this issue has some advice on ways that we can turn resolutions into actual solutions. Whether that be with our returning advice column from Barb Godin, our feature article from Barb Lehtineimi that explores a new way to approach resolutions (using ways that echo back to an earlier column from S.D. Livingston on breaking habits), or perhaps it’s more specific. Perhaps you want to become a better writer or communicator. Christina Frey’s “The Writer’s Toolbox” may be right up your alley.
On the other hand, perhaps you have no defined resolutions as yet, but are simply looking for ways to improve your mind. If that’s the case, The Mindful Bard’s Ten Favourite Podcasts, followed by S.D. Livingston’s current Primal Numbers, “In Praise of Science” should be a treat for both sides of your brain, while Hazel Anaka’s “From Where I Sit” reminds us how all the stories we get bombarded with at this time of the year may do the exact opposite.
Throw in a Weird Canada comic that I think is a good contender for next year’s “Best of” issue, and a Gregor’s Bed review of some poetry inspired music, and we have a very good way to start off this new year of The Voice Magazine.
My own resolutions are to get the larger Voice Student Survey out by the end of this month, so as to start our second give-away of a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, and to expand The Voice Magazine into areas such as fiction, and more information about goings on at AU. I’m very happy to have you along for the ride!
