Resolution Roundup + Adjustments for 2024

I’m late for my Year in Review, but I’ve got good reason! One of my tougher goals has finally come to fruition! Here’s how I did with my resolution for 2023, focusing on five areas of my life:

Home: I did indeed explore moving. It took a while, but I’ve finally moved across the country as of this past week! This goal is still in progress in some ways. I’d latched onto the idea of New England some time ago: mountains, trees, a more liberal culture, and perhaps cleaner air? But before buying, I decided to move temporarily. Would I tolerate the cold? Would I actually like living in the countryside as I’d been dreaming? Importantly, will my dog live her best life here? Or, will it be a there-and-back-again tale where I settle right back where I started? We’re finding out this year, I hope!

Occupation: I did take that break! I travelled some, but spent an outsized amount of time trying to fully recover from an accident. More on that below. So I did not do the children’s book thing, and my art output was minimal. I’d like to try again with art in 2024, even if it’s just one creative item per quarter that I can feel proud to share. And I’d like to improve my progress with paid-work, too.

Mind: I’d aimed to listen to every episode of Farnam Street. I enjoyed many of them, but sometimes ran into tones of ablism and privilege that rubbed me wrong, to the point that listening was frustrating. If you want to chat about that, let me know. For now, I stopped the “every single one” goal and switched to just listening to the information I found useful regardless of the author. I’ve particularly enjoyed the delightful Stuff You Should Know podcast. I’ve also enjoyed many books in business, personal growth, and fiction. Stolen Focus was a favorite personal-growth book for 2023, along with the humanity-affirming Cloud Cuckoo Land for fiction. In 2024 I’d like like to add more podcasts and books to build my wisdom, cleverness, and empathy, so if you’ve got recommendations, post them below! I’d also like to put more of what I learn into immediate practice.

Connection: I achieved at least one date-length interaction per month, and typically at least once a week! I pushed myself to have more date-dates than I’d had for years, and also scheduled lots of time chatting with friends and getting out and about in the community. That’s been super fun. I’d like to continue with the once-per-month (or more!) goal into 2024. Finding community and connection while in the countryside of a new state will be a feat, but I’m determined!

Body: In last year’s post, I shared an anecdote about food. But the truth is that my real goal then–and still to this day–has been to fully recover from being hit by a car in November 2022. I was advised at the time to say nothing publicly about the accident, but frankly more people should know what a struggle accidents can be, even if they don’t break any bones. I might not have been so in the dark about that if “real people” (not just lawyers with obvious interests) were talking about recovery. It’s been over a year and I still deal with intermittent pain with the injured joints. PT helped greatly when I did it every week, but that’s a huge time investment. Exercises at home help greatly, too, but I have to do them all the time or the pain comes back, so I’ll continue that in 2024. And with that pain managed, I’d like to do more of what I love: dancing, hiking, and tromping around with my dog.

And for 2024, an overall practice: I want to love being myself. I ran across this quote from Tumblr, and it absolutely fits what I’m after in life right now. So many of us perceive that “self love” is about believing others will find us lovable, and sometimes we spend enormous effort trying to be enough. What if we love living instead?

Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.

If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.

If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.

Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.

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I have to say, in spite of some pitfalls on my current adventure of moving across the country, I really do love this life I’ve got. I’m looking forward to making more of it.