No resolutions
Four lessons from 2023
For decades, I’ve been clinically addicted to making resolutions for the new year. And while the process and potential is intoxicating to me—I feel my soul lift in the presence of a blank notebook/planner/spreadsheet—the prospect of actually doing the things I write down leaves me cold. If I had a nickel for every time I wrote an “ideal schedule” that started with “wake up at 6am” and then followed that up with not a single day of waking up at 6am, I’d have enough for a drip coffee in New York City (around $5; too expensive).
The older I get, the less I believe in the quasi-religious idea of historical progress, that is, the materialist belief that for all of human history we’ve been marching toward some imaginary perfect destination, and simply by moving through time we somehow get closer to that ideal place. Social media was a mistake, etc.
This year, even though it physically pained me, I didn’t make an ambitious 2024 plan in search of some ideal version of myself. I have a single goal for my work (a very specific writing project), and I picked a single word I want to embody this year. That’s it. Basically, I took a brief glance ahead and spent some more serious effort looking down, to what is directly in front of me, and looking back, to figure out what I learned.
Here are my four lessons from 2023, in no particular order: