Checking in with my New Year's Resolutions

Not to scare you or anything, but we’re almost halfway through 2023

This year, for the first time, I was really intentional about setting my New Year’s Resolutions. New Year’s Resolutions draw a lot of understandable ire; a resentment that I, myself, have also harbored. Perhaps this is because I, like many others, have experimented with setting resolutions but, after failing to remain accountable, abandoned them soon after. Despite my past failures, I still found myself wanting to resolve. My mind did try to fight it, telling me that “January 1st is a day like any other. If you want to change something, change it now!” However, this thought did not deter me either. Arbitrary as it may be, I remained compelled by the impending change in the calendar year. 

In retrospect, that resistance largely came from fear. The fear of being accountable to myself. It’s very similar to the fear I have found in beginning again. Having failed to keep my resolutions in the past, I was keenly aware of the fact that any new resolutions could meet a similar fate. Did I really want to set myself up for that disappointment?

Something that helped me move past this fear was letting go of the expectation to live my resolutions right away. Put another way, my life did not have to look completely different on January 1st, 2023, than it had on December 31st, 2022. In fact, one of the great aspects of a New Year’s Resolution is that you have 365 days (or 366, if you’re lucky) to implement it. I realized that the measure of my progress would not be apparent on New Year’s Day, 2023. However, if I set my intentions and worked hard to remain accountable to them, I stood a much better chance of seeing demonstrable progress on New Year’s Eve, 2023. 

So, I took the plunge, and resolved to evolve. 

Now, we’re almost halfway through 2023 and, empowered by last weekend’s New Moon in Gemini, I want to take some time to look back on my resolutions. Hopefully, taking stock will allow me to see some of the progress I have already made and help to chart the course of my progress for the rest of the year. 

My 2023 Vision Board. Inspired, as always, by Becca Hobart.

1. Release negativity, invite gratitude

I’ve always been a positive, optimistic person. As poet laureate Onika Tanya Miraj once so eloquently put it, “Sagittarius, so you know I’m an optimist.” At some point, though, I felt myself betraying my Sun sign’s inherently cheery disposition. Especially in 2022, I developed a tendency to dwell in the negativity of situations I had once found light in. For instance, I was in a production and, rather than focusing on how much I loved the cast I was working with, I allowed my resentment of certain members of the creative team and confusion regarding the stringent COVID protocols to cloud my outlook. And, of course, since misery loves company, I found myself sharing my grievances with other people involved with the production. In return, I listened to their complaints, becoming further and further intoxicated by the negativity around me and within myself. When I look back, that production stands out as the worst of my college theater career. I wonder how much of that conception actually comes from the reality of the circumstances around the production versus how much of it comes from my shitty attitude. 

Unfortunately, this aforementioned production was not the only object of my newly-found negativity. I realized it floated in a slowly-expanding mental cesspit among other experiences, circumstances, and individuals. Teetering on the edge of negativity becoming my default reaction when faced with any challenge, I knew I needed some kind of force to combat my new inclination. 

I don’t remember exactly how I identified gratitude as the answer. Perhaps it was simply because I had a lot to be grateful for. As I thought about my resolutions, I had just returned from a three month stint across two continents. Traveling like I did was already an amazing opportunity, and it was only made more unique by the fact that, during this time, my sole focus was to experience the new cultures in which I found myself. I was also incredibly fortunate to then come home to friends and family who had missed me and wanted to spend time with me upon my return. Perhaps thinking about all of that helped to dissipate some of the negativity I had found myself feeling. Whatever the reason, I decided that gratitude would be my first line of defense whenever negativity arose.

In terms of how well I’ve been doing with this resolution, it’s been a mixed bag. I definitely don’t feel as negative as I once did but I’m not sure how much of that has to do with gratitude. In fact, I have no specific memories of feeling negative in a certain moment and feeling less so after inviting gratitude. I am, however, doing a better job accepting and respecting my negativity and, as opposed to living in them, finding a way to move forward in spite of those feelings. Maybe that’s for the best. While gratitude can be a powerful tool, using it to combat negativity brings a certain “there are starving children in Africa” energy to my New Year’s Resolution that I’m not at all interested in. Put another way, gratitude doesn’t take away the fact that I’m experiencing a negative thought. At best, it may just mask it. In contrast, acknowledging the negativity allows me to look at a situation, give myself the grace to say “wow, this sucks,” and then figure out how I move forward. While I’m not completely ready to give up on gratitude as a coping mechanism, I am definitely proud to have identified acceptance as another tool in my arsenal. 

2. Be more present

This newsletter is literally named Overintellectuals Anonymous. Does it, at all, surprise you that its author can sometimes get lost in their own mind? Would you be shocked to learn that, sometimes, the mental chatter gets so loud that life becomes even harder to navigate? Or, maybe, I’ve fooled you into thinking that I’m the cool public intellectual whose persona I try to project. Either way, I went into this year wanting to silence some of that chatter. I wanted to start living in the world around me instead of a future that does not yet exist.

Similarly to combating negativity, I wanted to use gratitude to help me be more present. The thought was that, in those times when I was caught in the strange loop of my human mind, I could express my gratitude for something in an attempt to bring myself back to Earth. It’s very similar to the mindfulness strategy of taking a deep breath when you feel overwhelmed, which I used to employ much more than I do now.

I pretty much forgot this strategy right away. In fact, I forgot greater presence was even a resolution of mine for this year. Needless to say, I have not experienced a ton of success just yet; or, at least, I haven't been aware of many successes in this area.

To give myself a bit more credit, I have found other grounding techniques. In addition to my pages practice, which I started last year, Overintellectuals Anonymous has become a great strategy. As I wrote about in the Preamble and Re: Overintellectuals Anonymous, this newsletter partly exists as a repository for thoughts that would otherwise clutter an already overactive mind. Each week, I get to take something that consumes my mind, like The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence being uninvited from the LA Dodgers’ Pride Night, and articulate my thoughts on it. Giving these thoughts a place frees up my mind, which makes it easier to return to the present moment.

Moving forward, much like releasing negativity, I do want to give gratitude another chance to help me be more present. I also hope to foster a greater awareness of those moments when I’m not overthinking, so I can celebrate myself for making good on my goal.

3. Writing

One of my big goals for 2023 was for writing to become a more consistent part of my life. After seeing the success of my journaling practice, particularly how the finite nature of the pages helped me stick with them, I wanted to find a way to do something similar with a form of writing that was a bit more generative. I decided to start free writing. It’s similar to the pages I do every day but it also allows me to premeditate and write about a certain topic, which you’re not supposed to do with the pages. As for the finite nature of this exercise, I decided I would set a timer and write until the timer went off. These free writes, I hoped, would not only allow writing to become a more consistent part of my life but they would also help me generate content for my various writing projects. So, for some amount of time each day, I made the goal to carve out time to write.

I am proud of how I’ve been able to honor this commitment, and free writing has definitely made writing a more consistent part of my life. There has, of course, been some trial and error with this practice. For instance, I typed the first two free writes of the year on my computer, which is where I wanted a lot of this writing to live eventually; or so I thought. The computer did not work for me. When I’m typing, I find that I’m very reactive to any spelling or grammatical mistakes. This is great when you’re writing something more formal, but not when you’re just trying to get some words out. Much like Julia Cameron had instructed me to do in the pages, I just wanted to move my hand across the page and see what scratchings the ink left behind. So, I got out my big, lavender notebook, started writing by hand, and have been doing so ever since. 

These free writes last for anywhere between five and twenty minutes a day. While the lower end of that range obviously isn’t ideal, it gave me the freedom to keep writing even as I traveled in east and southeast Asia earlier this year. Giving myself the permission to write for a shorter time meant that when I was exhausted, or simply felt uninspired, I could still get myself to write something. 

I will admit that I have started to slip since starting my new job back in May. Mostly, I have let myself off on days that I wouldn’t have earlier in the year. A few other days, though, I simply just forgot to do them. However, I have written something on most of those days when I haven’t done my free writes. My pages are written daily and I do something to generate this newsletter almost every day as well. Therefore, even if I don’t free write every day, I have already made writing a more consistent part of my life. Hopefully, I will keep it up through the rest of this year and beyond!

I would also be remiss not to mention launching Overintellectuals Anonymous as a goal of mine for this year. I originally wanted to launch this newsletter last May, then last June, then last July, then last August, before finally tabling it for a time when I could fully commit to it. It went by different names, had different publishing schedules, and explored different topics. However, everything has its season and I’m so proud of my new creative baby, even though it sometimes, much like a real baby, stresses me the fuck out. 

I’m going to leave it there for now. More resolutions were made at the beginning of the year, but I will save them for a later date. For now, I’m feeling incredibly proud of the small, large, and even non-existent steps I have taken so far. As I discussed earlier in the piece, I was afraid to make these resolutions at the beginning of the year. After taking stock of my progress though, I’m feeling reenergized and excited to see how I (hopefully) continue to progress throughout the next six months. Until then, unclench that jaw, babe; you’re doing great!

A Final Thought

A great teacher of mine, Becki Toth, once so poignantly identified that New Year’s Resolutions are seldom something fun. It’s stuck with me because she was completely correct. When I do make them, present company included, my resolutions come from those places where I find myself falling short of whatever ideal lives in my mind. What if, instead, I made a resolution for my own enjoyment? Is there a resolution that can, in a similar way to Becki’s resolution to make a new kind of pie every month, feed my soul in a fun way?

At the beginning of the year, I racked my brain for a fun resolution. Then, I had the thought to read a play for each month of the year. I love plays; performing in them, writing them, and discussing them. So, why don’t I read more of them? While this was a great idea, for whatever reason, I did not start this goal at the beginning of the year. However, twelve plays in six months is by no means a Herculean task. So, I would like to read twelve plays before the end of the year. A midway resolution to keep this process towards progress fun!