In the last few years, I've started to find the calendar too arbitrary to shape my life around - buying gifts for people on holidays instead of when I find good gifts for them, spending time with family during the worst season instead of the nicer ones, choosing self-improvement only when the turn of the month tells me to. My mind and heart move to a different rhythm; sometimes it's seasonal, but sometimes those moves take a longer or shorter time than a month or a weather pattern or even an entire year can encompass.
This yearly blog post has been helpful in organizing internal self-improvement, and in looking back on whatever happened to me across twelve months. But, in all honesty, I'm pretty tired of retrospective thinking. And I've found that either I'm trying to learn the same lessons over and over (fight self-doubt, avoid the distractions of the internet) or I'm trying small things that don't take an entire year to alter.
2020 seems like a good stopping point for this tradition. I may change my mind for 2021, but we'll see when we get there. In the meantime, I still want to analyze last year's (in greater detail here).
1. Rethink productive. If there was a single theme for my 2019, it was this. Whether I succeeded or failed, I don't know; I still don't have a good sense of how much work is enough for me not to feel lazy. There were weeks when I read five books and turned out five reviews, along with editing other people's work, promoting my own, and pitching still more; and there were weeks when I did nothing but watch Rifftrax, play phone games, and nap. I certainly learned, once and for all, that binging on work and then binging on relaxation is my natural pattern, and it takes so much effort to reverse that pattern that it's almost not worth it.
I'm still internally convinced that I'm lazy. Loved ones have tried to tell me that I'm not. My therapist asked me to define lazy, which set me back a pace or two. By the end of the year, I'd accepted that sometimes I must rest, but I hadn't stopped feeling guilty about it.
2. Lean into a hobby or two. Fail. Or that hobby was horses, which became a job. When I started volunteering at RideOn, I had to actively fight down the urge to be the best volunteer at the stable, to be the most useful person on any shift, to make special friends with the instructors, etc. It took real effort to be one among the group of people who helped instead of striving to be The Best One. I needed that experience, badly - but then I took it and turned it into a job instead of letting it be what it was, a hobby.
Cross-stitching would be better.
3. Bring collage and horses into my life. Success with horses, failure with collage, but I think the extraordinary success of the one (now I spend time with them almost every day!) nixes the failure of the other.
4. Be smart about yes and no. Success. I don't know if I did this very strategically at first, but I did finally figure out, during autumn, that reviewing as I was doing it had to stop. I started saying no and I kept saying it, continually asking whether X or Y opportunity would a) bring me money, b) bring me pleasure, or c) help with Ceremonials. If it didn't do any of those things, I said no. That's how it'll be for the next six months, too. Booya.
5. Be aware of the networking vs. friendship, promotion vs. information percentage. Success, only inasmuch as this turned out not to be difficult to navigate. Some friendships started professional and wound up better than that, while others ended up mixed, and still others stayed professional. I didn't have any trouble separating the wish to be personally liked from working well, which surprises me, as - see above with RideOn - I so constantly want to be specially liked. Not with the desperation of a people-pleaser, but with the internal conviction that I'm unusually cool and should be recognized as such by everybody. That sounds egocentric but I'm leaving it.
6. Teach. Failish. I did teach an online class, but I was imagining teaching in a classroom and that didn't come to pass. It's starting to be a running joke, my inability to get a classroom gig.
7. Travel. Success. I didn't go on one of the big trips I wanted to, and it might have been better if I'd gone to a book con in NYC I thought about attending. But I did go to Iceland and Chautauqua and benefited both my career and my soul in those places. Next year will involve a lot more travel, and I feel prepared to do it, with a passel of useful gadgets in my suitcase.
In 2020 I'm planning to listen to my instincts, hug friends, smile a lot, try hard. I'm going to write and think and breathe. I'm going to live, and I hope that living will be healthy and joyful, but I will reach deep down and far out for strength if it isn't always. Happy New Year, friends. Live well.
I'm still internally convinced that I'm lazy. Loved ones have tried to tell me that I'm not. My therapist asked me to define lazy, which set me back a pace or two. By the end of the year, I'd accepted that sometimes I must rest, but I hadn't stopped feeling guilty about it.
2. Lean into a hobby or two. Fail. Or that hobby was horses, which became a job. When I started volunteering at RideOn, I had to actively fight down the urge to be the best volunteer at the stable, to be the most useful person on any shift, to make special friends with the instructors, etc. It took real effort to be one among the group of people who helped instead of striving to be The Best One. I needed that experience, badly - but then I took it and turned it into a job instead of letting it be what it was, a hobby.
Cross-stitching would be better.
3. Bring collage and horses into my life. Success with horses, failure with collage, but I think the extraordinary success of the one (now I spend time with them almost every day!) nixes the failure of the other.
4. Be smart about yes and no. Success. I don't know if I did this very strategically at first, but I did finally figure out, during autumn, that reviewing as I was doing it had to stop. I started saying no and I kept saying it, continually asking whether X or Y opportunity would a) bring me money, b) bring me pleasure, or c) help with Ceremonials. If it didn't do any of those things, I said no. That's how it'll be for the next six months, too. Booya.
5. Be aware of the networking vs. friendship, promotion vs. information percentage. Success, only inasmuch as this turned out not to be difficult to navigate. Some friendships started professional and wound up better than that, while others ended up mixed, and still others stayed professional. I didn't have any trouble separating the wish to be personally liked from working well, which surprises me, as - see above with RideOn - I so constantly want to be specially liked. Not with the desperation of a people-pleaser, but with the internal conviction that I'm unusually cool and should be recognized as such by everybody. That sounds egocentric but I'm leaving it.
6. Teach. Failish. I did teach an online class, but I was imagining teaching in a classroom and that didn't come to pass. It's starting to be a running joke, my inability to get a classroom gig.
7. Travel. Success. I didn't go on one of the big trips I wanted to, and it might have been better if I'd gone to a book con in NYC I thought about attending. But I did go to Iceland and Chautauqua and benefited both my career and my soul in those places. Next year will involve a lot more travel, and I feel prepared to do it, with a passel of useful gadgets in my suitcase.
In 2020 I'm planning to listen to my instincts, hug friends, smile a lot, try hard. I'm going to write and think and breathe. I'm going to live, and I hope that living will be healthy and joyful, but I will reach deep down and far out for strength if it isn't always. Happy New Year, friends. Live well.
