I have a funny relationship with New Year's. In many ways, September still feels more of a true 'new year' for me, having never left that school-based cycle. But there is something beautiful about a new cycle starting in the cold, dark days of winter. Of declaring possibility when the air is frigid, the ground is covered in white, and the light is just beginning to return. I have had my jaded years where I declared New Year's pointless and made up (ignoring that most of what we engage in as a society is made up) and silly. I have had my gung-ho years where I convinced myself I was going to change everything about who I am because of this symbolic date.
Lately, I have mostly had reflective years. I think there is great power in symbolism, and in a date that we collectively pause to reflect, dream, and reset. A date we ask who we really want to be, and what it would take to get there. I think the problem is we see it as a linear path. That we can make a decision once, and either have 'will-power' (also a made up thing) to stick with it or not. And once we 'fail', that's it until the next year. We see a resolution as a single decision, not as a way of being.
I don't make those kind of resolutions. But I do remind myself that I have resolve - I have determination, I have willingness to try, I have the ability to pick myself up for the fiftieth time and get back on the metaphorical horse. Life is made up of cycles, and that's not a bad thing. We can still set goals and work towards who we want to be, knowing that it will be a spiral path there rather than a straight line.
So, who do I want to be?
I want to be kind and giving to myself. I want to listen to my body and continue rebuilding a relationship based on understanding what it needs and giving it that. I want to continue deconstructing all the ways I was taught to disbelieve and disobey and hate my body. I want to celebrate it, listen to it, and nourish it.
I want to be curious. I want to continue learning and finding new ways to understand the world. I want to hear peoples' stories and understand their values and beliefs and consider the world through their lenses. I want to ask questions and sit with things that spark my brain and let myself ponder.
I want to be in community. I consider community building and connection to be my fundamental purposes on this planet. I truly believe the only way to survive the crumbling of society is through community. If you are in my community, I am responsible for you and to you. Existing safety nets are being torn apart, so the only safety net we truly have is each other.
And lastly, I want to be slow. I want to slow my responses, because responding before I have all the information is harmful. I want to pause and consider the nuance of situations, not jump straight in with an opinion. I want to celebrate the shades of grey in every story. This is one reason I am returning to this blog - I think one of the cardinal sins of social media is that it prioritizes quick, short responses. It encourages us to hit that 'like' or 'share' button quickly. It asks us to put our ideas into a limited number of characters. But there are very few situations that can be truly understood that quickly. I think we lost something when blogs got subsumed by social media. Blogs allow us to take as much space and time as we want to engage with an idea. They allow a reader to choose when to engage, and to spend as much time as they wish with our thoughts, without an algorithm trying to get them to scroll to the next thing. They remind us that we are speaking in and of our own world, that it is not a universal world but one shaped by our unique lives and experiences. This is why I am back here - my one concrete goal for this year is that I want to do weekly blog posts. I am going to pull way back on my posts (and shares) on social media for at least January, and instead I am going to be trying to post here each week. I don't know what they will all be about yet, but I'm excited to see what I end up with.
With that, I wish you a beautiful day and year to come. I look forward to how we navigate it together.
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