My first blog post! It’s been quite a long time coming. The process has included: a year of talking about it, a few quickly abandoned attempts at building a website, and sporadically recording ideas in my notes app. Even now, I’ve given up on working on my actual website for today and have instead turned to writing the long-awaited first entry.
Writing is something I’ve always liked to do in theory, but hardly in practice. I used to journal a lot, mostly during times of crises where I was too distraught to feel self-conscious about the thoughts I was putting out into tangible and look-backable form. Those times have fortunately become less and less common, so my journal now spends most of its time on my nightstand waiting for another one of my inevitable bad days (read: usually during That Time of the Month). Writing, whether publicly or privately, is daunting for me because it always feels like a performance. I’m thinking about what I want readers to know about me, or how I want my future self to perceive my current self. When I was a teenager, I wanted so badly to be known that I excitedly documented every thought and desire. The idea of a stranger reading it and understanding what once was deeply hidden about me was exciting. I longed for the years to pass so my 20-something year old self would have something beautiful to look back on. Now, I’d rather hide. Or maybe I’m just a bad writer. If you sense me avoiding the point, going on tangents, or being vague, assume either or both.
Anyways, January feels like a good excuse to start the thing I put off last year. I love new years and hearing about resolutions and reflections so you’ll have to sit through mine as well, sorry! Here are my ins/outs of 2024 - I’m usually right about everything so if you disagree, you’re probably wrong :/
INS
- Dental hygiene. I haven’t been to the dentist in two years and I’d like to change that. Also, I’m going to make flossing fun again.
- Giving people the things you care about. We’re bringing back romance this year.
- Gut health.
- Observing the self.
- Cold following people on Instagram.
- Being really and truly honest with yourself.
- Keeping secrets.
- Elaborate and thoughtfully decorated love letters.
- Expanding vocabulary.
OUTS
- Self documentation.
- Weather-permitting activities.
- Meal prep.
- Taking the easy way out.
- Instagram For You page.
- Restaurant dessert.
- Mirrors.
Basically, I think we as a collective have outgrown self care routines that consist of nights inside doing face masks or whatever. I’m still going to do that, but I don’t want to make my life into a movie; I just want to exist. 2024 is about impracticality, inconvenience, and being really, really tired at the end of the day. I want to lay in bed each night exhausted, melting into my mattress. You might notice I’ve included a couple health related items as ‘in’. I’m tired of hearing about workout routines and meal prep recipes! We should romanticise the ugly and admit we’re all bloated and forget to brush our teeth sometimes.
This project is my first attempt at inconvenience this year. I have a bad habit of committing to hobbies with glamorous looking finished products, then immediately giving up once I realise the hours it takes to learn about a topic intimately. Knitting, painting, working out, programming, etc etc. I want to grapple with what I don't know, show up to events alone, and improve over and over again.
It's what everyone says they want: to be better. I don't want to be better exactly, I just want to act instead of freezing up in the face of unknowns. Instead of asking myself what I want or what would make me happy, I want to ask myself, what am I avoiding?
Maybe next year I'll focus on being really good at something.