When I last wrote, I shared my love of resolutions. Not a surprising admission as so much of what I do in my writing is make goals and publicly share them, in the hopes that in bringing people (you!) along for the ride, I’ll better stick to my plan. Plus, it’s fun to hear your advice, your tips and your own hopes for the season, for the year, for your life.

When I make my “summer goals” lists, I’m more about the micro and major adventures that make life more interesting. “Grow a watermelon,” for instance (which was a fail, but we really did try!)

I think of New Year’s resolutions as self improvement. And I recognize that people criticize them. That people say: New Year’s resolutions don’t work; a huge percentage of people don’t follow through; if you want to change your life, don’t wait for the new year.

Ok, sure, especially that last one. But I don’t agree. For me, and really we can only speak for ourselves in these endeavors, stating the intentions, even in non-specific form, as I’ve done below, really does help me put them in motion, and the new year is such a poetic time to do so. You shouldn’t wait for some arbitrary calendar date to make any positive change, agreed. But if the timing lines up that way, well, I’m in.

The timing feels exactly right for these resolutions this year. Maybe that’s my mind playing tricks on me, who knows, but I’ll take the tricks if they work!

New Year’s Resolutions 2024

Lean into winter - I’m sitting at my kitchen counter right now and it’s softly snowing outside. This is the Connecticut winter I want, and, so often, not the winter we get (there’s plenty to say about climate and the future, but these resolutions are about controlling the things I can control, and outside my personal realm of civic responsibility, that isn’t one of them). Weather aside, however, I have a long history of becoming fairly grumpy during the winter months, and even sliding into bouts of seasonal affective disorder (which, perhaps, we all suffer from at some degree during these cold, dark days?)

The truth is, there’s plenty I don’t hate about the winter: these soft snowflakes, for instance; the sharp sound of ice skates on the frozen pond across the street; blankets on ALL the couches even though I know you hate that textile clutter, J!; a freezing walk followed by a hot shower; snowshoeing and cross country skiing (which I haven’t done in forever, maybe it’s time!); hot drinks, of course; our recent regular visits to the local, cozy Irish pub for the Sunday session; and when it’s not punishingly cold, a quiet winter hike.

And, the further truth is, you have to lean into those things to make the winter bright. You have to embrace them, get up, get out, so that the dangerously ice walk to the cold car at 7 a.m. on a weekday morning is not the mainstay…not the only memory we’re making here. And when I say you, I mean me.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. So far this January, I’ve taken Gabe and his friends for a ski lesson. We hit up the open skate session at the local ice rink. I made sure everyone had the appropriate cold winter gear (and sleds.) We’ve got so much tea on hand.

I will keep it up! Because this season, already, feels so much better. I am saying inconceivable things like, “This has been such a fun winter so far!” Not just for show, either. I’m saying it because it has.

Think about my writing - When to do it, how to share it, what it is all about and whether it needs changing at all. More to come on this one.

Figure out my body - I haven’t been feeling my best lately. I say this to lay the groundwork for this particular resolution, and not to garner sympathy. Really! My complaints are minor, age appropriate and, to some degree, my own doing. And this year, at 46, I am eager to find both peace and some new solutions.

I’ve been plagued over the past couple of years by arthritis in my knees and bouts of acid reflux (which I wrote about here). The arthritis isn’t a huge deal, is likely genetic and hasn’t caused me to stop participating in any of the activities I enjoy, at least not yet, and the research seems to indicate I shouldn’t have to; that, in fact, keeping active is the best protectant. I went to see a knee doctor a couple of years ago when I had very sharp pain after running a half marathon, and he’s the one who diagnosed me, which was a real assault on my ego.

I made an appointment to see him again recently when my other knee started hurting, and my legs were hurting overall. I sometimes felt stiff enough going from sitting to standing that I had to take a moment before I started to move (and once I did, the pain would go away). What I went back to the doctor to ask was, “Is this normal?”

To ask, “WHAT THE HELL?”

It was a very humbling appointment and an immediate moment, one I’ll recall ten years from now, rhapsodizing about “my forties” with an air of nostalgia, maybe a little sadness for days gone by. The doctor told me that I could do further tests if I wanted, get my blood taken, that sort of thing, but yes, it all seemed “normal.” I had arthritis in both knees, but it wasn’t terrible, and certainly manageable. The stiffness was due to that and perhaps some IT band inflammation, fluid gathering when I wasn’t moving, and dispersing when I was. “This is what it is to be in your 40s and 50s,” he told me. “You have to figure out what your body can take.” He told me there was no problem with exercising, as long as I wasn’t in abject pain. But that I might pay for it later. And that’s where the calculations come in. Maybe you do the same things, but less, or differently. Maybe you run three miles but only once a week or one and a half miles, but every day. Maybe you do your fitness classes, but add stretches, or yoga, or physical therapy until the IT band pain feels better. Maybe you keep going and you’re sometimes stiff and that is worth it. “You have to figure it out,” he said.

And maybe goes for how it feels when I eat a lot of sugar, too. How it feels when I don’t get quality sleep. Maybe there is a whole world of “this is just how it is now” for me to happily explore.

It was such a relief to have a professional tell me something that I think I already knew: your body isn’t tolerating the things it used to in the same way, so it’s time to try something different. Does that sound like a resolution or what?

Work on my relationship with social media and technology in general - I am, like, the poster child for what’s bad about social media. When I scroll, I feel all the negative feelings they warn you about and I adopt the addictive behaviors that the software is designed to invoke. I get angry at myself for having forgotten somebody’s birthday. I feel guilty that I didn’t say anything to an acquaintance’s whose grandfather has died. I think people’s lives are cooler than mine and I want to put my phone down but can’t, then suddenly I’m exploring a friend’s friend’s mom’s political posts because of some comment I happened to glimpse over an hour ago, leading me down a tangled rabbit hole and into the pubicly proclaimed manifestos of people I barely know. This is my one wild and precious life.

Yet, it’s not all bad. Honestly! And I know that for many of you, it’s not bad in the slightest; that you don’t indulge in this web of complicated feelings. You don’t feel indebted to this technology at you fingertips. For me, despite not posting that frequently or logging on at all hours, nearly all my interactions feel angsty, with a few exceptions. The most notable exception is sharing my writing (which I’ll no doubt done with this post). This is, in fact, my main method of getting these posts out there (because people don’t just visit blogs anymore, this isn’t 2004!)

I don’t know what the goal is on this one. I think I look at my phone too much for a variety of reasons beyond social media, and I don’t engage in the disconnection tactics that I know work as often as I should, tactics that I’ve used successfully in the past. I know I’m not that bad, all things considered (that I am, actually, not a super technologically obsessed or savvy person) but I don’t want to be bad at all because I want my kids to see me as a role model on this. I know that when I delete Instagram from my phone, I don’t miss it the second it is gone, and maybe that means I should do this permanently, and not sporadically, which is my current practice.

In 2024 I’d like to try and find a happy medium, tap into my inner luddite and find time to read for hours without the hint of technological interruption, whether external or self-inflicted.

(building off that last sentence…)
READ! - Read 36 books at least, specifically. This is my one and only specific and measurable resolution.

Listen to new music - Over the past few years, I have looked to music for comfort and inspiration, as I have often throughout my life. But I’ve been turning to the music I already know. Where my reactions are prescribed. Getting into new music on my own, without someone else’s specific recommendation, has felt like too much of effort. Too much uncertainty. Not to mention, I didn’t know how to even do it! I missed the CD listening stations in the brick and mortar record stores of my youth!

And it was something I really wanted because that kind of cultural awareness has always been important to me, a source of true enjoyment. I wanted to know who was coming out with what and how Olivia Rodrigo sounds.

In December, Nora, who is incredibly into music and has become my favorite influence, asked me if I’d heard the song “Vampire Empire” by Big Thief, a band I like a lot, although I had never dug in beyond the few songs I already knew. I told her I hadn’t, she played it for me, and I became obsessed, listening over, and over, and over. I let it slide into Big Thief playlist suggested by Spotify, and I liked it all so much. I listened to new (to me) song followed by new song, in something like a flow state, something very different than the impatience of frantically flipping through familiar songs, searching for…what? I don’t even know. Something really clicked, and I’ve kept it up, listening to NPR Music’s “New Music Friday” playlists, and going deep into the discographies of bands I’ve always liked, but never really explored.

I think that in my adulthood, and especially lately, I’ve become overly enchanted by discourses on methodology of living. Self-help-adjacent think-piece-type psychology regarding why this is this or that is so. To be clear, I do think that is really important stuff. What modern life is like for us all, and why, and how to make big structural changes that affect our politics and our health, and personal life decisions that dictate how our family spends our day-to-day.

But sometimes I get all wrapped up in big-picture reasoning when the reality is that to make some of these changes - some not all - you just have to do it. That, yeah, maybe my life is very busy and I’m tired during the afternoons and I don’t tend to make good decisions when I’m tired, and my legs hurt and I’m confused about why and everything is changing and I don’t understand how people discover new music and I would listen to new music but I need to listen to like ten new episodes of my favorite podcasts so I don’t fall behind on knowing the state of the world, ecetera.

Maybe that’s all true. And yet! You can just make the decision. The best way to listen to new music is to turn it on.