not really into resolutions

but some New Year reflections, nonetheless

No one’s really writing about “New Year’s Resolutions” anymore, are they? I hope we’ve ditched the “New Year, New You!” jargon and are collectively shifting away from the idea that discipline and coercion will free us. If we are doing some ritualistic reflecting, maybe we can work with “intentions”, and be a little softer with ourselves whether we accomplish them.

Usually, I rebel against setting resolutions - or really anything when I feel I am being coerced (even just by a societal norm. what can I say, I’m stubborn). But there is still something appealing about the invitation to think and dream beyond day-to-day/week-to-week at the outset of the new year. Over the past couple of weeks, I have found myself in a headier space - reflecting on what’s worked, what hasn’t, and how I might morph and budge my habits in a direction that feels more true to who I am growing into.

Throughout my early-mid 20s, I applied quite a strict structure to how I managed my time and my life. In my first job after college, my boss was a real type-A dude who had lots of structures in place to help him feel that he was getting the most out of his life. Straight out of college, (living abroad, feeling unsettled, etc) this structure was helpful to me, so I applied it to both my work & my life. I set goals and tried to envision what I wanted in 5 years’ time, and in our weekly meetings, he’d ask me about my personal goals to try to hold me accountable. And it was helpful for a while! When I kept forgetting to call my parents, he helped me remember to set aside time for it.

After a few years of applying this structure to my life, even after I left the job, I noticed that these systems started to make me feel anxious about whether I was accomplishing “enough”. So I relaxed it. Over time, it became quarterly goals without weekly ones, then quarterly intentions, then seasonal intentions (because why tf was I structuring my life around business quarters?). I still use the basic framework of seasonal intentions to guide the structure I use today.

In the summer of 2019, I took some time in a park writing down my personal values in a little note on my phone. Today, they still feel relevant, and I try to revisit them (and revise, if needed) when I write my seasonal intentions. Those seasonal intentions take the form of “in the next 3 months I will: [fill in the blank]. I will do this by: [fill in the blank]”. The blanks get filled with very gentle germs of seeds of ideas like “nest”, “root into community”, “invite play”, as examples of seasons past. And the “I will do this by” gets filled in with more practical steps I can take “say yes to invites from friends”, “work on a random project that has no intended outcome”, “purchase the materials I need to make our home feel cozy”.

This year, I feel drawn to going bigger picture again, maybe a timescale of 5 or 10 years- but not in the traditional way of thinking about it. (Have any of you seen Debbie Millman’s 10-year plan? I haven’t managed to sit down and do it yet, but I intend to). I appreciate the invitation to feel into the dream - what would I be wearing? Who would I be with? How might I feel in my body? At present, I’m noticing my dreaming centering on what I’m looking for with my creative practice, how I want to share it with others, how I want to keep learning about how to care for a home, and how I feel in relation to the place I live and the people in my life. I feel slightly overwhelmed by all of it, so I haven’t yet made the space to sit down and do it. Maybe sending you this will be the little push I need to actually do it?

In 2023 so far, I’ve mostly just been musing vaguely about what I’m looking for this year: more play time, simplicity, seasonality, nesting, having friends over. Not “ambitious” in the traditional sense, but deeply ambitious when I consider them against my own personal values.

how do you organize your goals/intentions/thoughts about how you’d like to spend your time & your life? I’d love to know! Especially if you’re like “I do not”. :)

noticing & doing

i feel like strength training is a bit like being vegan - if you aren’t telling people you’re doing it, are you doing it right? (I joke because of how often i feel compelled to tell people about my weights class at the ymca - it’s great! I hate the music so much that I kind of love it, I love how sassy the teacher is, and I like how hard my body works for those 50 min).

ditto cold plunging - surprising to everyone (most of all myself), I am really loving getting into really cold water. I’ve been gently testing my limits with this lately by going into ponds and lakes around us now that it’s winter. so far, I haven’t met water that is too cold for me to at least get into for at least a minute or so but we’ll see.

I also feel compelled to tell you that I got in up to my armpits (we found a stream running off this pond, that ice turned out to be way too thick for me to crack it with my hands)

over the holidays, I worked on these little xmas stockings I’d been vaguely planning to make since October when I thrifted the old sacks for them. I wrote about how I could not seem to get out of my own way when making them until (weeks later) I suddenly could.

still working on making the harder surfaces in our house softer to sit on - this little sunshine egg of a cushion was a dress I thrifted in LA and I stuffed it with leftover cotton stuffing from another cushion I altered. (an exercise in letting “good enough” be good enough).

all the vague reflecting I’ve been doing put me in a space to start putting together a little in-progress seasonal altar. I sat with it for a few days and realized what it was missing - ‘attention’ by my dear friend maya skylark

ah, much better

in a similar vein, I’ve been really inspired by a few tablescapes I’ve seen floating around on the internet, so I tried my hand at one for my family’s table around yule, and one for NYE. In the theme of just giving things a go, I’m proud of these first attempts and looking forward to getting better at it with time.

we hosted a little NYE/housewarming gathering & it was such a treat to have new friends in our home as we make it homier day by day. (also, how to take ur swimsuit from day to night, lol)

a few recent fits I particularly liked, featuring a lot of thrifted items :,)

I kind of can’t get over this invention. it’s hilarious, it’s ephemeral. the question I have is - is it a fire hazard? lowkey tempted to find deadstock transparent fabric to try it myself. thoughts welcomed.