no resolutions (just kidding, a few resolutions)

06 Dec, 2023

I’ve been feeling pretty unmotivated and uninspired when it comes to writing the past few weeks. I’m ninety percent sure that this is due to the fact that it gets dark so much earlier now (which is not helped by the fact that I've also been busier than usual). I am, unfortunately enough, deeply affected by weather patterns and sunset times in terms of my mood and my motivation, so the fall-back sunset kind of hit me like a truck. Usually, it takes me several weeks to adjust my brain to the darkness and overcome the initial slump. This process mainly consists of me checking the clock every thirty minutes and repeating aloud, "It's six o'clock, not nine o'clock. We have time! WE HAVE TIME!" until it sticks.

I do think I’m slowly getting ahold of my mind once more, though it still drains the life out of me to look out into the gloomy December evening and remember that just a few months ago, there was light until almost nine. Back when I was in Alaska, I only got a small taste of the "dark for most of the day" segment of the year and I was still ready to climb the walls. My friend who lives there year-round tells me that she has to stock up on SAD lamp bulbs ahead of the darkest months and that they do actually help her. Maybe I should get one...? (Or maybe I should kick myself into gear. I'm just stalling. You'd think I would know my own tells by now!)

I'm trying to force myself to sit down to write this week, but I hate having nothing to say. I guess I felt like I was doing so well for a little while - really leaning in and just going for it - but recently it's a bit like I've lost my "writing voice" which is....incredibly irritating because it's just my internal narrator??? Who is always with me? But I try to put her to paper and she clams up immediately. The more pressure I feel about something, the harder it is for me to overcome it, so I decided to step back for a bit and let things percolate with a mini-hiatus. Apparently, even my writing block couldn't keep me away for long. I crave the sweet release of setting my ramblings free on the internet.

Anyway, where was I going with this?

Oh yes - so, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to achieve in this new year! Not just general resolutions this time around, but also more specific goals. Typically, every year in December some of my friends do a New Years Moodboard where we send each other pictures (cobbled together from Pinterest and the like) that we’ve collaged, which have all of the things we’re hoping for in the new year. I usually set my collage as my lock screen background (the one I made last year is still my current screen - a creature of habit, I am).

I fill it with nice quotes & pretty art & pictures of hobbies I enjoy. I think maybe I'm too vague with my hopes, sometimes, though. The initial thought behind it was that seeing the images constantly would help me keep the things I want in mind, but I’m beginning to think that I’m more than a little ADHD¹, so I find that it’s not as useful as I would hope, because generally if I’m looking at my phone, it’s open and therefore not on the lockscreen and therefore fades entirely from my mind. Still, I get a nice background out of it and thanks to that, the tradition continues. ²

(Yeah, I know there's a lot of links in the next paragraph. Listen, you don't have to click all of them. Most of them kind of say the same thing, just from different sources. I just like to see where some articles differ versus what stays the same.)

From what I see around the web, a resolution is a more general idea of something you want to do versus not do, while a goal is a more time-specific and step-specific plan of action. I’ve read that to set good goals, it's nice to have a 'why' behind your motivation (it seems like this is because understanding why it's important to you also helps to solidify that it's meaningful enough to pour time and effort into and also that it helps cement it in your goal identity), so the last week or two I’ve been jotting down anything I want to achieve and then trying to pare it down to a simple what and why, for ease of breaking it into achievable goals over the upcoming year.

So, um, for record-keeping and also accountability (oh, man, this might come back to bite me - the accountability buddy system is my highly illogical and oddly inexplicable enemy), here is my general list of Whats & Whys for 2024 in no particular order! Some of these are more resolution-like (no hard timeline) while some I have an idea of how often/when I want them completed by, so I've listed those as goals.

one | resolution
• what: purchase more physical copies & digital downloads of music
• why: directly support artists & aquire hard copies of favorite albums
• notes: I try not to buy things frivolously, but I do listen to a lot of music (126k+ minutes on Spotify this year) & as much as streaming services are useful for discovering new music, I want to start supporting the artists I love more directly when I can (also: the disappearance of some movies I've bought on streaming services due to changes in streaming rights has me nervous about the same thing happening with music.)

two | goal
• what: reach out to friends at least once every other month (& try to plan an event every few months)
• why: to keep connections & let my friends know that I'm thinking of them, which I think we could all use
• notes: I've been gearing up on this one over the last few months, despite my emotional slump and I want to keep that momentum. With my trusty best friend Google Calendar (chock full of birthday reminders and dotted with important events people have told me they have upcoming), I'm hoping to really knock this one out of the park this year.

three | resolution
• what: join more out-of-home hobbies
• why: to learn something new and meet new people
• notes: Also, I think I do better working on something if there's another person with me, so maybe it will help me push myself to complete projects.

four | goal
• what: reach (approximately) a B2 level proficiency in Spanish by the end of the year
• why: I want to be able to comfortably converse with other people!
• notes: I think I'm around an A2 level now, so I have pretty far to go to hit B2, from what I understand, but I spent a lot of time this year researching self-study and testing different methods, so I'm ready to hop back to it. This may be too lofty of a goal, but I'll reassess once I get in the groove.

five | resolution
• what: journal (and maybe meditate?) at least a few times weekly
• why: clear my mind & self-assess
• notes: I'm actually so good at (read: the worst about) avoiding unpleasant thoughts and circumventing hard conversations with myself. Time to buck up, Eve. We're delving deep on introspection this year and learning to settle ourselves mentally.

I have a few other things I want to focus on, but I have a bad habit of trying to add too much too fast to my juggling act and therefore dropping all of my apples entirely, so I'm saving some other things for future additions down the road. These are just the things I'm excited about and wanting to focus on now!

I always feel a little more inspired hearing other people's hopes & aspirations for the future, so I hope that maybe this finds someone else who needed the jump-start to think.

2024's a nice, even number - I'm crossing my fingers for good things. January, I'm looking at you!

Good luck out there,
Eve

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#personal #reveries