So this is the new year?
“People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” – Albert Einstein
So this is the new year?
Huh? I thought it would be more shiny. Maybe even have a few sparkles here and there.
It just looks like any other recent day. It’s eerily similar to any other recent year.
Truth be told, though, that’s not a bad thing at all.
Time and dates are human constructs. They are our method of drawing lines in the universal sand to give our lives a sense of order. We need our constructs of time so we can work together, show up on time, hit our STEM Tuesday deadlines, etc.
But, as Einstein so famously touted, time is an illusion.
However, we’ve demarcated this time illusion of ours to give us a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day, a new hour, and so on. These are times to reflect, reload, and plan where we are and where we want to be.
Time is the present moment.
We have this time. We have this moment.
Now, what are we going to do with it?
It’s a question that strikes the core of being human. Its answers are as varied as individual humans are varied. There are almost infinite opportunities available to us.
What will we do with the moments we are given in 2024 and beyond?
One Day or Day One?
I heard this snippet a few months back regarding procrastination and goals. I can’t exactly remember the source and it’s driving me bonkers. Nevertheless, it has become my new philosophy for trying new things or starting new projects. It has also become a central theme of my school and library presentations to young creators.
For decades, I lived in a “One Day” world. I wanted to be a writer but I didn’t do the one thing necessary to be one. I didn’t write. Then came my “Day One” when I started a thing. I wrote a word. I wrote another one. I wrote a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter until I wrote an entire story! It was an amazing feeling!
If you find yourself saying, “One day I want to do _____”, then start this new year by saying, “I’m going to start _____ on this day.” and then do it.
The STEM Tuesday New Year’s post theme for 2024 is:
One Day or Day One?
One Day vs Day One. Try it and see how it works!
Create. Inspire. Improve. Share.
The Day One philosophy expanded into four steps for getting to the brass tacks and making stuff.
- Create – It all starts with an idea, a word, or a mark on a piece of paper. Just do it and see what happens. Make the thing only you can make. Make the thing only your brain can construct. Make the thing and throw it away or take another stab to remake the thing. There is no perfect. The important thing is to get your ideas down. Download the words or images from your brain onto paper and they become real.
- Inspire – Investigate and discover what makes you excited. What are the stories or the information that ignites a desire to tell others? If you’re struggling for inspiration, pay attention to where your mind goes when it wanders. It might be trying to tell you something.
- Improve – One gets better at doing a thing by doing the thing over and over intentionally. Intentional practice works! As with the creation, once the words or images are downloaded from your brain, they exist. If something exists, it can be improved. Do the work and then do it again.
- Share – This step can be the most difficult. It tends to be the most uncomfortable for a creator. Putting creative work out into the world indeed opens one up to criticism and judgment but you can learn so much from showing your work. What works? What doesn’t? What feedback is offered to improve the work? There’s also the inherent reward of developing connections with like-minded creators through the sharing of work. We’re all riding this creativity train together so we might as well make the ride a joy and a celebration. Writing and illustrating help us understand our place in our space. This understanding of our place is enhanced through sharing.
Technology = Tools
Although there were amazing STEM advances this past year, like inching closer to a return to the moon or the first FDA-approved gene-editing therapy for sickle-cell anemia, an end-of-year wrapup on one of the news channels called 2023 the “Year of AI”. There has been much talk and even more justifiable concern from the creative community about the use and abuse of artificial intelligence.
Technology doesn’t create. Creators create. As loyal STEM Tuesday readers, we realize the fact technology is a tool. We know one can use tools positively or negatively. The choice of how we use AI is in our creative hands. If a technology is directly used to create something, that’s stealing. AI is powerful but we must remember AI does what it does by training itself on human creations, often without attribution or compensation. It learns how to write or create by mashing up all the inputs in its database.
Bottom line, 2024 will see an explosion of AI implemented with both good and bad intentions. It’s up to us to decide how we’ll use it and how others use our work.
Happy New Year from the STEM Tuesday Team! Enjoy every “Day One” of your creative journey throughout your entire “stubbornly persistent illusion” that is 2024.
Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky) via Wikimedia Commons
Mike Hays has worked hard from a young age to be a well-rounded individual. A well-rounded, equal-opportunity sports enthusiast, that is. If they keep a score, he’ll either watch it, play it, or coach it. A molecular microbiologist by day, middle-grade author, sports coach, and general good citizen by night, he blogs about life/sports/training-related topics at: www.coachhays.com and writer stuff at: www.mikehaysbooks.com. Two of his science essays, The Science of Jurassic Park and Zombie Microbiology 101, are included in the Putting the Science in Fiction collection from Writer’s Digest Books. He can be found roaming around the X-sphere under the guise of @coachhays64 and on Instagram/Threads at @mikehays64.Share this:
