Most New Years, I have a tidy little list of resolutions – not too many, of course – and I make a valiant effort of keeping up with them. Sometimes I veer wildly off track within the month, sometimes within the week. But my type A Virgo heart needs resolutions and goals and a thoroughly mapped road to travel, even if by next week it’ll all be moot. It’s the plan that matters, not the journey or the destination.
But this New Year’s Eve, the eve of my debut year, my resolution is to not have a resolution. My resolution is to go with the flow, to see what happens and learn and keep swimming instead of constantly fighting the current. To, you know, maybe chill the fuck out. Just a little.
I’ll still write, of course. I have plans, yes, but they’re the same plans I’ve always had and always will have. Write a book. Run. Lift. Go to work. Try to keep this chaotic balance of mother-wife-author from spinning apart. Everything I’ve been doing for the past year, two – trying, trying, trying to keep up
But a resolution – well. If having a child has taught me anything, everything is up in the air always and forever. Add in a new job in the new year and the typical unpredictability of publishing and really –
Let’s just try to enjoy ourselves despite not knowing every little thing.
Let’s just try to breathe in and breathe out and let the surprises come as they will – the good, the bad, the mediocre, the wtf.
Let’s just try to let go of what we can’t control – the awards, the lists, the reviews, the timelines – and take stock of the one thing we can: the writing.
Let’s just try to silence the what-ifs and listen to the what-is’s.
Let’s just try to remember that we are all of 32 years old, that every year of that life has ingrained habits and needs and desires, that of course we want to be loved, to do good work, to be celebrated and appreciated, that we have expectations, dreams we can’t just change or turn around overnight, that all of this – all of life – is a process, a long and shifting and unknowable journey and the person we are today and the person we are in the new year are both the same person.
The process goes on longer than one night, one month, or one year; longer than one book or one series.
I don’t believe in resolutions anymore, but I do believe in the process.
