January 1, 2024

The Earth revolves around the sun, spinning. The clock ticks. Time marches on. Relentlessly.

It’s a new month in a new year. And a Monday to boot.

I have in the past laughed at the notion of resolutions, the arbitrariness of picking a date to reinvent yourself. I suppose, really, I laughed at waiting. Make your goals on July 18 if you need to. Start again and again as many times as it takes to get where you’re going.

Breathe. Lose focus. Breathe again.

Still, there is something to be said for taking stock regularly. It’s probably wise to do it at least once a year. There is no particular reason January 1st is better than July 18th, but there’s no reason it’s worse.

Last year I set myself a series of very clear goals with very clear metrics for success. The overarching theme was to write, exercise, and get the house cleaner. The problem is that for most of what I set out to achieve to measure success as I defined it I had to keep track of the metrics. I needed to set myself goals each month and then assess whether I met them. 

I met the writing goals. Ten poems, two stories, six blog posts. Those are easy to count. The rest I couldn’t tell you whether or not I succeeded by the terms I laid out in January because I didn’t make the goals or track the achievements. I do know, though, that I had a reasonably steady exercise habit right up until October, when I spent the whole month with a hacking cough and fell completely out of the habit. I’m reasonably sure I failed at house cleaning by any metric, but not as dramatically as I likely would have without the goals.

It is notable that the one goal I achieved was the one I worked on the least consistently. I focused on writing a bit for a month or two at the beginning of the year and then tried and mostly failed in fits and starts until November. Contrast that with a solid nine months where most weeks I succeeded in exercising at least twice a week (though the goal was three times a week).

This year I am abandoning metrics in favor of practices. I am a more functional person if I am meditating, moving, and writing. The problem is that left to my own urges I'll only do one of those things, and even writing I'll only do intermittently.

I will focus on building habits. No matter how consistently I exercise I don't ever seem to start really enjoying it but I found this year that if I did it regularly I both hated it less while I was doing it and found myself vaguely missing it when I skipped it. I never quite got to the point of liking it but there were definitely days where I said to myself “you know, you’ll feel better if you do it,” and then I did feel better when I did.

Once I start, I hate meditation less than I hate exercise, but it takes time to get there. For awhile it will be a tortuous process of sitting with my brain while feeling like it’s the company I enjoy least. Knowing that makes it hard to get started.

Enjoyment notwithstanding, both movement and mindfulness are my most useful tools for managing both fibromyalgia and anxiety. You might think that alone would be enough to motivate me to do them. You’d be wrong. It’s hard to prioritize long-term well-being over current moment unpleasantness.

So I'll make my goals day by day, week by week. It will get easier as I do it but even so I anticipate I will have to start again, over and over. My goal is simply to start as many times as it takes.

Writing is different. Sort of.

Theoretically, I enjoy writing. The reality is more complicated. 

My current frustration with the loops my poems are stuck in isn't new. I've quit due to feeling incapable of writing anything new (or anything good) many times before, but even if the frustration isn't new, it's an impediment to continuing the process.

I'll return to poetry eventually but for now it is too distressing, too tied in with intrusive thoughts. Plus every poem I've tried to write for months has been garbage. I might be willing to suffer for my art but it has to actually be art first.

Instead I intend to focus on prose and on how stories are crafted. I will come back to the poetry when I can again approach it as a creative practice rather than one of self-flagellation. 

My intention is to treat writing less as a means of emotional release and more as a craft.  I want it to be less about getting things out of my head and more about putting words together in interesting ways. Likely it will help me order the things in my head along the way, but treating that as the goal hasn’t been working. By which I mean it has neither resulted in interesting writing nor sense of having worked through anything.

At the end of the day (well, end of the year) if I can manage to solidify any of the three practices I’ll be emotionally (and possibly physically) healthier. If I can manage to figure out how to regularly incorporate all three, even better. Perhaps then I’ll be ready to think about house cleaning as a practice.