Not That Kind of 2023 Recap
And you don't have to either
This time of year is pretty much the only time when I miss singing. For a lot of people, Christmas music probably means Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé, but for me? For me it’s quartet gigs at holiday parties singing Carol of the Bells and bitching over coffee afterward that it has no place for the soprano to breathe. It’s college holiday concerts, walking up the aisles of a beautiful church holding candles, wax burning our fingers, singing an a cappella version of Veni Veni Emmanuel. It’s the super tight harmonies of Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming and cluster chords in Eric Whitacre songs. It’s dozens of voices blending together to make something beautiful, something none of us could do on our own.
I miss it. There’s not a lot that I miss about my singing days, but I do miss that.
Currently social media is showing me an endless stream of recap posts full of exciting and enviable accomplishments, occasionally broken by posts proclaiming that it is totally fine if all you did in 2023 was survive.
And, like… can’t there be something in between these extremes? Something in between “I was a NYT Bestseller and sold 6 more books and ran a marathon and created an online course and solved the whole climate change problem” and “I’m up and not crying.”
It’s so easy, when looking back on a year, to see only the numbers and things that fit into a checkmark easily: words written, books read, money saved. The problem with SMART goals (gag. I effing hate smart goals so so much), or really any number specific goal is that it becomes a binary win/lose situation. You achieve your goal, you win, you don’t, you lose.
I mean, that just absolutely sucks.
The point of goals is (or at least should be, I think) the why and that always always gets lost at the end. Why did you want to read 100 books? Why did you want to write every day? Did you get closer to feeling the way you wanted to feel by doing those things even a little more this year than last? Great! Huzzah! Success!
Will speed-reading 20 picture books just so you can make a totally arbitrary reading goal written down 12 entire months ago make you feel the feeling you were aiming for? Maybe it does, and if so, well, that’s great, but also – and I say this as a fellow Elder Millennial raised on stickers and external validation – no one is keeping track. You can give yourself a gold star anyway. It’s fine. It’s not even cheating, I promise. You win because you say you do. The end.
So, I’m not going to count up the books I read (I didn’t actually keep track this year, anyway) or the words I wrote (those I could get access to if I wanted, but I won’t). I’m not going to calculate the hours I practiced my cello or spend my time searching for other things I can word in a specific way to sound good enough to put on a bulleted list. Instead I spent some time thinking about moments from this past year that I want to remember. Feelings that felt good, that I want to keep alive in my brain.
I want to remember the day one of my library teens came in and told me I was the first adult she’d ever told her real name and pronouns to, that she knew she was safe with me because I have rainbow and trans flags everywhere and I’m open about being queer myself. It felt like a gift, from her to me and from me to my younger self who needed that safe adult. It felt like, amid so much bad in the world and so much frustration in my job, that I was doing something that mattered.
I want to remember the moment the guy in the string shop brought my rental cello out from the back and I almost cried because I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I missed playing. I want to remember what it felt like to bring the bow to the strings for the first time in 20 years, the soreness of my fingers as I developed callouses, the ache in my arms as my muscles grew stronger. I want to remember the feeling of my teacher saying I’d had a total breakthrough on something I’ve been struggling with for months. How it felt to play in public for the first time since high school and to not only enjoy the experience but feel really fucking proud of myself.
I want to remember what it felt like to find the last puzzle piece I needed for the book I had struggled and struggled and struggled with for a year. That one suggestion, “I think she needs an art friend,” that, granted, ruined my life for a minute but also solved all of my problems. The next draft flew out of my fingers in record time. It worked. It finally worked. I want to remember what it felt like to finish this book that had felt so impossible for so long. What it felt like to realize I did it. It was so fucking hard and I did it anyway.
It’s so hard for that to be more important than whether agents or editors will want it, but I want to try to keep it more important. I want to try.
I want to remember how happy it makes me to have green things in my apartment to tend. Plants which, yes I could certainly have lived without, could have used that money on other things, but they make me happy, make me feel like I’m connected by a thread to the natural world, surrounded as I am by city concrete. I want to remember what damp earth smells like when the ground is frozen solid.
I want to remember what it felt like to meet a truly kindred spirit, totally unexpectedly. Someone who understood me right away, in a talk-over-each-other-because-we’re-so-excited kind of way. I want to remember all the little moments that turned a friend into a Friend, who has become my loudest cheerleader at a time I need her the most. I want to remember the friends who got really excited about a (mostly) children’s music recital where I played a single piece. A friend who read literally 4 different horrible versions of my book in progress and cheered me on through every one. Friends who exchange snarky texts with me during meetings when I’m trying to hold my tongue. Friends who go to concerts with me and look stuff up at intermission because we’re constantly curious. Friends who make me laugh, who let me cry, who plan elaborate trips with me for my birthday. Friends who lovingly watch over my cat when I am away from home.
I want to remember what it feels like to sit in my comfy writing chair and look out at my apartment, the rooms I’ve gradually put together, and feel like I’m really home. To get rid of the boxes I usually save, because while I’ll probably move again at some point, I’m learning to let go of the feeling that I need to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. To look at the life I’ve carefully built and rebuilt over the last ten years and think, Yes. This is mine. This is me. I’m proud of this.
I want to remember the slow realization that I don’t have to say everything, share everything. It’s okay for some things to be only mine, and no one else’s. That thoughts don’t have to be heard in order to be real. I want to remember that I started these letters not knowing if anyone would care, and that people have cared, do care, and I know that because they told me so.
I want to remember how it feels to have my cat snuggle up close and put her head on my arm when I’m sick and don’t want to move or do anything. I want to remember what her purr sounds like when she knows that I’m upset.
These are the things I want to value. Not numbers or AcCoMpLiShMeNtS. This is the energy I want to bring with me into next year.
So what about next year? Do I have any plans? Intentions?
Yes, and no.
My intention is to Not.
Not buy a planner1. Not sign up for any online classes2. Not attempt arbitrary habits based on the assumption that there is some perfect version of me that I should be endlessly killing myself for3. Not succumb to the endless messaging that THIS! THING! Will make my whole life better.
Just… not.
My intention, my hope for the new year is to trust myself more, and to invest in quality, not quantity, of things, and friends, and every wild and precious moment that I spend on this blue marble in the sky. To teach myself how to focus deeply again and to make decisions motivated by love and hope instead of fear. To listen to my inner voice more than the ones shouting at me from all sides.
It’s a lot, in its simplicity. Fighting against what I’ve been told my entire life. But I don’t have to strive to be more, I want to be happy with who I am.
And I want you to be happy with who you are, friend. Because you are amazing and perfect. Period.
Happy Holidays to you and yours. See you next year.
I am finally accepting that I don’t use one and really? I don’t need one. There have been times in my life when I have needed and used one but I don’t right now. And while I totally get that habit trackers can be super helpful for many people, for me they feel stifling so I’m just not going to do that anymore.
Obviously I know that I don’t know everything. But I’ve spent the last 5 years devouring every single bit of writing advice/teaching/methods/thoughts from everyone else on the planet and it is time for me to look inward for a while. Trust my own process. And this also applies to cello. I have a teacher. I don’t need to spend money on every single webinar or online community/class/situation that crosses my path. Shit takes time and that’s okay.
Though I really should eat more vegetables. That’s 100% a thing.