Do not buy me the jade egg
That link is not a hint. It's just so you know I'm not making this shit up.
Note: Usually the Saturday essay is for the paid tier only, but as it’s the last post of the year, I’m celebrating by sending this one out to everyone. I hope you all have a lovely whatever… holidays if you celebrate, break from work if you get one, Saturday if that’s all it is to you. I hope that you, wherever you are, have some joy today. Thank you for giving me my writing back this year. You can’t know what it means. Although, maybe, you do. I’ll see y’all back here on Jan. 5.
Dear Writer,
It’s a random thing, the end of the year, but it’s another piece of evidence that meaning is created and assigned, not inherent. January 1 is just a day, not fundamentally different from September 17 or March 12. Just a day. But every year, it carries on its back this sense of apprehension and wonder.
And it’s gonna be 2022. I mean… what the fuck with that, right? I remember when I was a kid, singing to that Prince song and thinking that 1999 was so far away as to be incomprehensible. Now I look back at 1987 like it was never real.
And honestly, it wasn’t. Numbering the days, the months, the years? It’s all made up. It doesn’t mean anything, really, except what we decide it means. So it either means everything, or nothing, or something in between, depending on what we’ve decided it means.
The new year could mean a new opportunity. A fresh start. A new you. Do you need to be new? Probably not. But the idea of a new you is appealing sometimes, isn’t it? After all, the old you… ugh. Am I right?
So we go into the new year thinking this is it, this is the year. It’s gonna be better. I’m going to change. Get smaller. Get bigger. Do more. Do less. The specific parameters of the change doesn’t matter; the change itself is what matters.
The new year as an arbitrary marker isn’t a terrible one. Sometimes we need markers, and rolling with the universal energy that comes when everyone is focused on one marker provides a little added momentum for whatever you want in your new year, so that’s cool.
One of the things I fail to do at the turn of the new year, which I usually meet with fearful wonder with just a hint of existential dread, is to think back on what happened in the previous year. I tend to treat the past like an old Kleenex. Once it’s all dirty, I really don’t want to think about it anymore.
I remember once I was on a business trip with two friends, and one of them asked me and the other where we lived; in the past, the present, or the future? The third of us immediately said the past, and that made sense; dude was a brooder. The asker said she lived in the present, which is probably the mentally and emotionally healthy response.
But me? I was all about the future, baby. I love the unknown, the yet-to-have-happened, the road maybe chosen but definitely not yet traveled. I tingle with excitement when I think about the marvels the unknown future holds, the surprises, the new experiences, the good news I hope will come.
I am, as it turns out, in love with the unknown. Once it’s known, however, I become all Jed Bartlett about everything: What’s next?
But now, on the eve of another Next, I’m trying to get myself to think back over this past year and all that has happened. A year ago today, I was anticipating a simple Christmas with my eldest kid—poor thing had been housebound with her mom since Spring break due to COVID—and an upcoming visit from my boyfriend just after the holiday. He was driving from Colorado for two days to see me because it wasn’t safe to fly, and he was planning on staying for two weeks. A year ago today, I was still just talking about finally finishing the How Story Works book, but, just like the many years before when I was talking about it, I had no immediate plans to actually do it.
A year ago today, I didn’t know that it would be my last Christmas with a kid in the house. I didn’t know that my boyfriend would travel out for a two-week visit, stay an additional week because a housemate back in Colorado had a COVID scare (negative; all turned out fine) and then would look at me and say, “You know… I could just stay.” I didn’t know that in the fall of this year I would once again tell my best friend about my need to just Write the Damn Book, and she would lose her patience with me and assign an arbitrary deadline of October 15. I didn’t know that I would actually hit that deadline and that by December, I would have the Damn Book just about ready for sale as the world ticked over to 2022.
I didn’t know that this year I would start a newsletter that would get me writing regularly again; not just podcasting. Writing. I had no plans to do this; one day, I ran across Substack and I just said, “Okay,” and started writing.
And here we are.
That’s how I do almost everything. No planning. Just, “Okay.” See above, re: boyfriend, who is now my live-in life partner. A year ago today, we’d been friends for years, but had only been dating for six months, and had only met in person one other time.
“You know… I could just stay.” “Okay.”
I didn’t have any plans for 2021. I intended pretty much none of it. It all just… happened. It was a momentous year for me, a year of tremendous change, and 2022—for which I have copiously planned—promises to be just as changeful.
But for right now, for this moment, I’m going to step out of character and look back. This year was not easy, but in a lot of ways, it was pretty great.
I’m wary of the “gratitude” thing. It’s been co-opted by Goop-types and I’m a bit snobby about getting Goopy, probably because I’m a middle-aged, middle-class white lady and Goop feels like a trap I need to keep my eye on, lest I trip and fall in and the next thing you know, I’m sliding a jade egg up my hoo-ha.
That said, I do feel there’s a real benefit to conscious gratitude, but conscious gratitude requires a deliberate look back, or at least a look deep into the present, and like I said… that’s not where I live.
But in this moment… this deep, quiet puff of breath into the frigid December air… I’m going to take a moment to be grateful for what has happened, and to try not to be overridden with anxiety over all my plans for the new year. For a moment, I’m going to try to balance on the now with an ear out for the echoes of joy from the past, and an eye toward the future because I know myself and I will never not be looking ahead.
In this moment, I am Goopily grateful and that’s okay because it’s just you and me, and you know that jade eggs are not part of my future.
Right?
Right.
I mean…. right?
Right.
See you in 2022.
Everything,
L
Lani - I don’t do gratitude, either, but thanks to you, I make note of my favorite part of every day. Could be a sunset, could be a donut, could be adulting a thing that I’d been procrastinating about. I call it my Happy Thing for the day.
Here’s to a happier, healthier, and wealthier 2022!