There’s a trend going around where people share their words for the new year and I’m joining the back of the line. This magical word is supposed to guide your actions for the next 353 days, and it might be a silly idea but no one ever said it was a bad idea so I’m forging ahead.

Attack is one word I think I’d like to throw around more. I have this habit of hanging back and hedging, letting decisions get made through inaction. It needs to stop or I’ll never get anywhere that looks remotely like somewhere I want to be. And as I ease out of the minor road called Getting an Education onto the huge terrifying highway called Having a Job I need to take the car off auto-pilot and steer that thing myself. It isn’t going to be easy.

I could have chosen action, I suppose. But attack speaks more to going out there, grabbing my life by the lapels and shaking that bastard down for loose change. (Whereas action kind of sounds like me sauntering over and asking rather nicely if he could spare some change for gas).

I’ve been scared/lazy/unfocused with my writing and it’s led to this cycle of ‘not writing-well, no one was going to read it anyway-still not writing’. Attack is the word to get me out of that spell. Attack will be my mantra when I juggle 24 hour duties with writing articles and blog posts because one pays the bills but the other feeds my soul.

Attack will be screamed at me during middle of the night studying, cramming years and pages of knowledge into my diminishing grey matter so that the next few months can be the smartest of my entire life.

Attack will be whispered in my ear when I try and fail to get something published, when I surprise myself by writing something inspired. Because attacking is the start, not the outcome; the attempt, not the end result.  At the end of this year it won’t matter if I’ve failed because the whole point was to try. Failing just means I tried. And it means I can try again.

2015 is going to be a defining year, whether I like it or not, so I can only say one thing: Bring. It. On.