DO YOU MAKE YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS anymore? It wouldn’t be polite to discourage people from that noble task, unless the resolution maker wants to become better at picking people’s pockets or some equally anti-social pursuit. The real problem with resolutions is not that you tell yourself what you’re going to do, it’s making yourself do them. That task sometimes works better if you have somebody to help you navigate toward your goal. There has to be someone other than you involved or you wouldn’t need the resolution in the first place.
Or maybe it’s worth experimenting with an altogether different approach, one that puts aside resolutions and starts by imagining the future: not a single natural event but the future as an extension of now or 10 days from now as the calendar determines it. Where do your thoughts go and with whom? What happens that involves you; what affects you, even if you can’t control it. What can you share to make life better for yourself and for others.
Think of this New Year exercise as an adventure, not a burden. To participate in Imagining the Future I’m suggesting that you squeeze your thoughts on some feature of the future of Columbia County and the world around this county to a total of 250 words. We will publish as many in the order we receive them… assuming we get any at all. There’s no deadline except for the one yourself.
Why do this when you are already welcome to write a longer letter to the editor at The Columbia Paper?
We figure shorter is easier (mostly) and you know the subject. It could be 10 words, not 250. How long is 250 words? It’s from the beginning of this editorial to the end of the paragraph above this one.
Letter writers will be familiar with our letters policies: we need phone number so we can confirm the writer a is real person and not an avatar, troll or hacker; no accusing someone of a crime. One difference from the letters policy is that writers will not have to specify where the writer lives.
And because we’re Imagining the Future we ask that you use the tools of the present. Please submit all your contributions pasted in the body (message area) of an email. We don’t have the staff to manually retype handwritten manuscripts. Also, for security reasons, we do not open attachments.
What’s in it for you as readers? Hard to say other than it’s a sharing of expectations about the future of the county and the towns that comprise it. There’s no time limit so it’s as fair to talk about tomorrow as it is to imagine what Hudson or Kinderhook or Copake will be like in 2023.
Developers, politicians and planners are busy carving up the county for better and worse, but that could be my imagination at work and Imagining the Future can be yours.
It’s one more forum where people can get some attention. We can write stories about what’s happening here but it’s better to have it come directly from the folks who read the paper.
Send your thoughts to letters@columbiapaper.com
In the “Subject” box of your email put “Future.”
THIS PAPER IS OUR WINTER DOUBLE ISSUE
(No New issue Dec. 21.) Next new issue Jan. 5, 2023
