To return again, anew

Today is New Year’s Day, and with the day comes the energy of new resolve. It seems hopeful that so many folks start the New Year with intentions to change for the better: this year, we tell ourselves, things will be different.

On the one hand, this is the definition of insanity: here’s to another year of doing the same things and expecting different results. But on the other hand, this is a perfect illustration of the old axiom “Hope springs eternal.” They say that second marriages represent the triumph of hope over experience, and every New Year’s Day, many of us choose hope, again, despite past experience.

We are the same person on January 1st that we were on December 31st, only one day older. But this widespread determination to turn a new leaf along with a calendar page is both hopeful and encouraging. I heartily approve of renewed resolve not because we’re likely to achieve our New Year’s resolutions but because there is something wholesome about trying. The stretch demanded by reaching is itself salubrious.

My goals for 2023 are the same as most other years. Every day, I want to write in my journal, take and post at least one photo, meditate for at least five minutes, and walk at least 17,000 steps. Every week, I want to blog at least three times, write at least one letter, and go on some sort of Fun Outing. Every month, I want to go to the Zen Center and to a museum or botanical garden at least once, and over the course of the year, I want to read at least 50 books.

In 2022, I faithfully kept some of these goals…but others, not so much. To me, what’s important isn’t so much the perfect keeping of a goal but the dogged determination to keep returning to it.

 

In with the old

This morning I sorted through stationery, bundling the monthly letters I wrote to myself in 2020 and making room for the letters I’ll write to myself in 2022. This is a habit I’ve kept for the past few years: every month, I read a letter I wrote the previous year, then I write a letter to my Future Self.

I’m realizing my perennial reluctance to set New Year’s Resolutions isn’t based on any reluctance to set goals for myself–I set goals for myself all the time. Instead, this reluctance stems from an aversion to setting new goals, the whole spirit of New Year’s resolutions resting on the attitude of “out with the old, in with the new.”

I don’t want to start any new habits in 2022; instead, I want to continue cultivating the habits that have sustained me so far. Instead of “out with the old,” I want to continue in with the old.

Every year, I set the same basic goals for myself: read 50 books, write daily, blog more, and get a certain number of steps (currently, my daily step goal is 17,000). Every year I also resolve to take lots of pictures: at least one a day.

Looking back on the past few years, I’ve kept these goals, mostly. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve journaled nearly every day, and I have a shelf of notebooks to show for it. I wear a Fitbit to track my steps, and I use Goodreads to track the books I’ve read. For the past few years, I’ve religiously taken at least one photo every day even though I’ve been largely remiss about publicly posting those photos.

The only goal I continue to struggle with is the intention to blog more regularly. Given the choice between posting to my blog and writing in my journal, my journal always wins. If I had a secretary to transcribe each day’s scribbles so I could easily share them online, I’d have no shortage of things to share. But since I am my own secretary, editor, and muse, there are rarely enough hours in the day.

Every new year, I tell myself that THIS is the year when all this daily writing–all the journal-keeping and blog-posting–will result in an actual Book, “publish a book” being the biggest un-checked item on what is probably the world’s shortest bucket list. But like the opening montage in the movie Up where one mishap after another prevents Carl and Ellie from taking their dream trip to Paradise Falls, the elusive Book I presumably have in me is perpetually pushed to the back burner.

The last print book I finished in 2021 was Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness, where the Book within a boy named Benny literally cries out to be written. Unlike Benny, my Book has yet to speak to me, at least in any language I can hear. But my notebooks still cry to be filled, so I continue to show up at their pages.

 

Goals on hold

This morning when I replaced my old planner, I paged through some of my entries from the first few months of 2020, when the year was new and we had no idea what the future held.

Last January, friends and I met in Northampton to celebrate my birthday, and last February I met a friend for lunch and a walk at Tower Hill Botanic Garden: two outings I took for granted at the time but seem unimaginably exotic now. Right before my birthday last year, I went to the Zen Center on a Sunday morning then walked to Harvard Square to drink hot chocolate and write in my journal at Burdick’s Cafe, and a few days later, I went to a postcard-writing meetup in Chelmsford: the last two times I set foot in a cafe.

Every year, I make more or less the same goals for the New Year, renewing my intention to write in my journal daily, blog three times a week, and go to the Zen Center and a museum at least once a month. Although I’ve been journaling throughout the pandemic, I haven’t blogged much: with so much of life happening virtually these days, I’ve looked for any excuse to unplug. And with both the Zen Center and many museums closed, those two goals are officially on hold.

Last year started innocently enough then turned weird in March. I’m hoping that as more people have access to one of several COVID-19 vaccines, life will return to some semblance of normal-ish by the end of this year: not life as it was, but a life that allows outings and gatherings and other planner-worthy activities.

 

Starting anew, again

I bought a 2020 weekly planner in late October, back when I wasn’t sure I’d ever dig myself out of my paper-piles to survive what I secretly referred to as my Semester From Hell. While I blogged every day in November, this past month has been largely consumed with teaching tasks: reading drafts, grading final projects, (finally) submitting grades, and then recovering from all of the above.

Now that 2020 is only hours away, I’m looking forward to starting anew, again. Every year, I set more or less the same goals for myself: I always want to walk, write, read, meditate, and blog more. This past year, I didn’t meet all the goals I set for myself, but I’m proud to say I continued to track those goals all year: when I wasn’t walking, writing, reading, meditating, or blogging as much as I’d like, it wasn’t because I’d forgotten my commitment to do those things.

So today, I set-up the planner and calendar I use to track my daily, weekly, and monthly goals. I look forward to this routine every New Year’s Eve in part because I enjoy any excuse for buying office supplies. But I also appreciate the fresh start a new year, a new semester, or a new planner gives: a chance to turn the proverbial page. So as the end of December wanes into a New Year, I wish you and yours all the best for 2020.

 

Resolving again, anew

It’s New Year’s Eve, so I spent part of the day setting up my goals for the New Year. I’m not a fan of big, grandiose resolutions, but I like setting and tracking small, attainable goals.

In the past, I’ve set monthly goals I’ve had spotty success with–some months I stay on track, and other months I don’t–so this year I’ve decided to take the advice of a CNN story on Monday resolutions, setting up a recurring reminder on my Monday to-do list to review my goals for the previous week.

Most of my goals for 2019 are the same as my goals for 2018. Each day, I want to meditate, write in my journal, log at least 15,000 steps, and take and post to Flickr at least one photo. Each week, I want to blog at least three times and write at least one letter. Each month, I want to go to a museum once and the Zen Center twice. And over the course of the year, I want to read at least 50 books.

I know from the past that I tend to meet my daily meditation, photo-taking, and step-count goals as well as my annual reading goal. I’m far less faithful when it comes to blogging, museum and Zen Center attendance, and letter-writing: given my work and household obligations, those activities are the first to fall to the wayside. But the whole point of goal-setting is to give oneself a push, so I welcome the excuse of a New Year to get a New Start. If nothing else, sitting down and deciding what you want to do in the New Year is inspiring, even if you sometimes fall short of your goals.

 

One a day, every day

New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time for taking stock. Looking back on the wins and losses of the previous year, folks with a penchant for self-improvement typically use the occasion of the New Year to make resolutions. Although I’m a sucker for self-help books, I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’ve seen enough New Years come and go to know that well-intentioned resolutions are often broken and forgotten by February, so setting grand goals for the New Year sounds like a guaranteed recipe for disappointment.

That being said, I’m a big fan of small, attainable goals. This past year, for instance, I set a goal to meditate at least five minutes every day, so although I didn’t go to the Zen Center as often as I would have liked, I am happy to say I meditated at home every single day. I also met my yearly goal to read fifty books in 2017, a goal I reached by reading a little bit every day.

The other thing I managed to do in 2017 was take and post to Flickr one photo every day. In any given year, I take far more than 365 photos: on days when I go somewhere or do something visually interesting, I might take and post dozens of photos. But on otherwise ordinary, unremarkable days, I need a nudge to take photos, and a 365-day photo challenge provides that motivation. Even in the gray days of February or the busiest days of the semester, I knew I had to snap and post a photo of something, no matter how boring or inane.

Over time, a daily photo challenge starts to feel like a personal scavenger hunt or visual gratitude journal: no matter how uninspired or bland a particular day might have felt, you have to find at least one image worth sharing. This year as always, I posted lots of pictures of pets; this year for the first time, I also posted lots of pictures of postcards. Scrolling through my photoset of “365 in 2017” photos, I see a visual time capsule of the entire year.

Because noticing is contagious, once you push yourself to take at least one picture a day, it becomes easier to take two, three, or more images. Over the course of the year, you hone your eye so it is perpetually on the lookout for Today’s Picture, and you prove to yourself day after day after day that there is always something interesting and share-worthy going on: you just have to capture it when it happens.

So on this New Year’s Eve, I’ve decided to continue into the New Year the three habits I honed over the course of the Old. I’ll keep meditating, reading, and snapping at least one photo a day, everyday. I hope what worked in 2017 will continue to work in 2018.

Click here to see my “2017 Year in Books” on Goodreads, or click here to see my “365 in 2017” photoset. Enjoy, and happy New Year!

 

The season of stopping

We’re accustomed to seeing January as a season of new beginnings when actually winter is the season of stopping. Perhaps the reason the new year starts in January is to convince us that something new is happening right at that point of year when nothing seems to be moving at all. The plants are dormant or dead; the birds are largely inactive, doing nothing other than feeding and fluttering, with little singing or strutting; and many mammals are hibernating, having disappeared into dens and burrows. Even the earth itself seems to be sleeping, the sun having turned a cold shoulder. What better time to turn off or at least inward, letting one’s own imagination go fallow during a season of contemplation and renewal.

Why are New Year’s resolutions so popular other than the simple fact that this is the worst time of year to make them? Every January when the sidewalks are encased in ice and crusted over with rutted slabs of ankle-twisting snow, throngs of new walkers and runners hit the streets, determined to start an exercise routine when the days are coldest and darkest. It’s infinitely easier to run or walk in the spring and summer, when the sidewalks are clear, the streets are well-illuminated, and you don’t need to wrap yourself in layers of swaddling, but few people start workout routines then. Instead, the middle of winter is when we resolve to turn over a new leaf even though the trees themselves are bare of actual leaves. The season when seasoned runners find themselves most challenged is exactly when new runners (and walkers) set out in droves to begin their self-improvement anew even though all natural indications suggest that mid-winter is the time to stop and surrender all such striving.

If you want to go against the grain—if you want to defy nature—make a firm resolve to improve yourself in January, or any other month. Something there is that doesn’t like a wall, and something there is that doesn’t like improvement, neatening, and straightening. Closets naturally prefer to be cluttered, bodies are gravitationally inclined to sag, and motionless objects automatically surrender to inertia. As I type these words, I’m surrounded by sleeping cats who show no desire to move or be moved, being content instead to lie nestled into the furry warmth of their own slumbers.

Winter, in other words, is a natural time for stopping, for sleeping, for retreating; only the perversion of a pagan holiday convinces us instead to see January—that two-faced month—as being a season for starting, for initiative rather than inertia. In January, I tell myself I should walk more at the very time of year when I feel like walking less.

When J and I left for lunch today, there was a red-tailed hawk circling overhead, his pale belly lit by slanting sunlight. At the birdfeeder were three fat squirrels—one hanging on the feeder itself, and the other two scavenging seeds underneath—and all three seemed oblivious to the bird soaring overhead even though red-tails regularly feed on squirrels. Those fat squirrels seemed almost smug in their blithe disregard, as if they knew the fatter they became, the more difficult they would be to be plucked from the sky. The squirrels that would be the tastiest to consume are also the hardest to catch.

Although today’s post is illustrated with photos I shot today, I actually wrote it last year: an overlooked draft I never got around to posting, and thus perfect material for a day when I left the house only to take the dogs to and from our backyard dog pen.

 

Retrospect

Yesterday was my birthday, so here is the requisite shot of Friday night’s celebration: Girls’ Night Out at Solea in Waltham. In past years, I’ve shared similar table-top shots; last year I was sick on my birthday, so the celebration felt anticlimactic. This year, instead of trying to figure out what I want from the proverbial “rest of my life,” I’ve decided to reflect on what I am grateful to already have. Instead of seeing the occasion of my birthday as an opportunity to focus on what’s wrong and needs to be fixed, I’ve decided to focus on what right in my life and needs to be continued.

So in the spirit of tapas–little dishes that whet the appetite and make for a meal when combined–here are three little things I did as a 38-year-old that I want to continue now that I’m a day over 39.

This past year I’ve made a more serious effort to meditate with others. During the spring and summer, I started practicing with the Open Meadow Zen Group, and recently I’ve been making an effort to sign up for talks and interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center. After having led a Zen group of my own in New Hampshire–and after seeing that group fold–I was a bit shy about climbing back into the “sangha saddle” again. But now that I’ve taken baby steps back toward doing formal meditation more regularly with others, I’m wondering why I insisted on practicing on my own for so long. Meditating at home on one’s own is an important part of practice, but I find meditating with others infinitely more powerful.

This past year, I’ve made a more serious effort to see my life–not simply meditation–as being my spiritual practice. Instead of limiting my practice to what I do on a meditation cushion, I’ve been trying to pay closer attention no matter what I’m doing. That means spending a lot of time doing “driving meditation” during my weekly trips between New Hampshire and Massachusetts: instead letting myself zone out while I’m driving, I’ve been trying to follow my breath as I drive, paying close attention to the sensation of my hands on the wheel while I watch other cars with alert concentration. If sitting upright on a meditation cushion qualifies as “practice,” why can’t sitting upright in the driver’s seat?

This past year, I stayed consistently debt-free and saved money instead of digging out from debt. In the past, I’ve relied upon credit cards to fund my under-employed summer months, which has meant I’ve spent my fall semesters paying off debt. This past year, I did a better job managing my finances (and I taught more) throughout the summer, so the money I made during an extra-busy fall semester went toward savings rather than debt. Without feeling like I’ve scrimped, I’ve felt more financially “settled” this past year, paying off my credit card balances every month (even if that meant dipping into savings over the summer) and being more diligent about saving for next summer and beyond. After having spent years in a marriage where we couldn’t make ends meet on a six-figure salary, I love the feeling of living within my means (and enjoying myself) on much less.

So there you have it: three things I feel I did right this year that I want to continue. They aren’t exactly New Year’s Resolutions since they’re things I’ve already started doing; instead, we might call them Birthday Retro-lutions, nibbles of wisdom I recognize as tasty in retrospect that I’d like to continue sampling as I continue to creep toward 4-0.