Hey folks—
What are the greeting conventions in the third week of a new year? Is there a statute of limitations, like the twelve days of Christmas? Is saying “Happy New Year” now tantamount to uttering a curse? I don’t think so, but mine are a deeply superstitious people, so let’s err on the cautious side. I hope you had a great start to the year. There.
On December 31, I reviewed the past year and set intentions for the coming one. Not resolutions, per se—I feel like resolutions have become passé, only heard in the context of someone sniffing, “Oh, I don’t do resolutions”. Intentions, conversely, are almost eye-rollingly trendy, but I subscribe to their power; it’s more of an energetic shift than a behavioural change, IMO. It’s much easier—gentler and less daunting—to create change when we approach “the usual” differently, than by trying to introduce an entirely new reality. Intentions are also really great when they come about as a result of being sick of your own shit.
I’ve written before about how “not this” has long been my primary directional metric; a signpost that appears periodically to force a course correction. I simply don’t always know if I’m gamely headed in the wrong direction until I hear that little murmur, or I slam into a wall (this happens when I am way, way off, which is embarrassingly often). With luck, I’ll see that destination looming up before me just in time to go, “NOPE” and swerve in another direction. A hard stop, though more painful in the short term, is also very effective.
“Not this” is an incredibly nebulous concept—not so much a destination as an awareness. If not this, then what? Well, I suppose we’ll find out. Eventually.
What I’m saying is, “fuck around and find out.” This is probably an unhelpful method of orientation for people who like goals and milestones, who are troubled by non-specificity. But allow me to posit that perhaps we don’t necessarily know what we want—or at least, not what we need, what’s good for us, or what’s meant for us.
How many of us know what “this” is, anyway? Let me frame it another way: How often have you headed single-mindedly to whatever “this” was, only to get there and go, “Is this it?”
It’s happened to me enough times to believe that, at least for me, “this” ain’t it. Because I’m often wrong; because I defined my destination based on what I saw working for others, not taking the time to find out what was right for me (by finding out what was wrong for me). In other words, via a long series of “not this”es.
The opposite direction of “not this”—the south to its north—is a misdirection I think many of us get thrown off course by: “should”. Where, whom, and what we think we should be. My favourite definition of “should” is “a belief based on someone else’s value system”1. My own definition of “should” is a chronic condition, much like text neck: our muscles become so tight, bunched up, and inflexible from years of pointing in one direction. In this analogy, we become rigid from the tension of looking away from ourselves and toward others.
Have you ever had the experience of looking up from your phone and being startled by where you are, or what’s going on around you? Have you ever realised that you were in imminent danger because you weren’t paying attention to your environment? That’s what I think looking away from a life directed by “should” feels like. We can discover that we’re not at all in the right place, or that there is so much we’ve been missing out on.
According to this model, of course, we don’t automatically redirect our course in the right direction—that’s still a path beset by bewilderment, defeat, and dismay that leads to the hill I will die on, where adversity is enriching, dammit. It is absolutely fine to not know where the fuck we are going, because the process of getting there is how we find out what we are made of and what our best life looks like, which only happens when we find out exactly how strong, amazing, and self-sufficient we are. Get taken out enough times, and we start to notice that, amongst the shit and detritus that keeps tripping us up, the ground is absolutely strewn with the stuff we need to keep going.
That’s a lot of metaphors. Let’s go for an anecdote that brings us back to intention.
Last January, I was, to put not too fine a point on it, not okay. My finances and admin were a mess, my mental health was trash, I was staring at forty, and my health was making itself known as one alarm bell after another. Not this, I thought, which is a high-level summary of DOOM, DARKNESS, and a lot of bad, bad, (bad, bad, bad) thoughts.
I happen to believe that the bad things that happen to me are the good things that happen to me. Life has proved it to me—hell, I have proved it to myself—again and again so I know that it’s true. But, motherfucker, it is hard to believe it in the worst moments.
I heard
talking about this the other day:That’s the journey. It’s the hero’s journey. It’s like this is the oldest story in the entire world. You’ve got to go through this dark night of the soul. Don’t quit before the miracle. Keep going, keep going. But boy, when you’re in it, you’re like, “This can’t be right. This can’t be right!”
So how do we find our way when we’re in the very pits of the Worst Place™️? There is no “Aha! This will solve it!” option we can reach for when we’re smeared all over the floor—which is why sometimes we might feel tempted to reach for something that will just make it all go away. I was right there. It was really bad. There was only one truth that I knew for sure down there—and the thing about truth is it can show up unbidden and smack all the wind out of us, or it can appear as a glow that we can make out in the dark, even just a bit. It wasn’t enough to warm me or light my way, but it did give me an orientation, a sense of which way to turn. The truth was simply, “Not this.” I didn’t want to feel like this, ever. What did I need to do to change it? I didn’t exactly know, actionably—but I did have an idea of how I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel secure and stable, which was the exact opposite of how I felt in that moment.
So in January last year, I set an intention to achieve stability and security. I had no idea what that would look like; I wasn’t in any frame of mind to conceptualise a precise outcome. I just dragged my sorry ass in the direction of a feeling—and babes, I dragged my ass for months. Because, while derailments and diversions are guaranteed according to this (gestures vaguely) “method”, there are no shortcuts, honey.
I remember the darkness began to lift at the end of March and after that, I kicked and screamed for another seven months or so. There was turning forty in June (my friends will tell you I did not do it gracefully) and getting my autism diagnosis in July, not to mention an ongoing slew of all the things I tried for various medical mysteries. Meanwhile, I was comprehending so many new data points and managing the fatigue of reconfiguring my life to accommodate it all.
I do believe I clean forgot about the intention I’d set at the beginning of the year—but the beauty of declaring an intention is that I’d pointed myself in a direction and off I bloody went. I wasn’t even conscious of where exactly I was heading, and I bumbled and stumbled and cursed and cried all the way. And the most amazing thing that happened on December 31 was that I sat down with my journal to review the chaos of the past year, and I discovered that I liked my life very much. I felt secure. I felt stable.
The most perfect joke of it all is that whatever I’d imagined that would look like, it’s not this—which is to say, that nothing has really changed. My life looks kind of exactly the same. I live in the same place. I have the same job. My friends are the same. Sure, things have shifted slightly, but just in a way that everything fits better now. It sounds almost too mortifyingly smug to say, but it’s the truth: the thing that changed is me (I’m so sorry). I’m profoundly different because I supported myself this past year in a way that went way beyond survival, to foundational; I committed to myself in a way I’ve only ever committed to other people and pursuits. Through self-fidelity, my priorities and perspective shifted.
There’s another amazing thing that emerged through the sausage-maker of the past year: I realised I didn’t want a lot of the things I thought I’d wanted. I’d prioritized peace, and that fundamentally changed what I had the inclination for—in other words, what I could be bothered to pursue. It’s resulted in a lot of saying “no”, which has been more of a relief and less horrifying than I could have anticipated.
Being open to “not this” has shown me that I know what I want much less than I thought I did; even things I said I wanted as recently as a fortnight ago are being called into question. Such as travel.
In the new year, I wrote down that I would regret not traveling as much as possible this year. In the second weekend of January, I went away for a weekend to Madrid and spent most of the weekend a gibbering wreck (big cities are suddenly very overwhelming to me, it seems). I recalled that the last time I’d traveled, I’d cut my trip short by two weeks. Am I not a person who wants to travel anymore? As someone who has always identified with belonging to the world at large, it's quite a crisis of identity. Am I, a person who has spent all of my life everywhere, really, in fact, a person who wants to stay home? The prospect is dismayingly appealing—at least for now. What I want might change, again. I will let it.
Even though I currently find travel stressful, I am good at it. One thing I’m especially good at is finding myself in whatever the popular local institution is by following my nose (caveat: you have to be on foot for this). And one of the many advantages of going places alone is you will always find a seat, however busy a place is. By the end of my first day in Madrid, I’d abandoned my list of bars and restaurants I wanted to try out for the solace of my Airbnb. I was severely malfunctioning,2 and my “Want to go" list on Google Maps was absolutely not it. Still, I had to eat (see: malfunctioning) and decided to find somewhere on the way.
Wandering disorientedly down Calle de las Huertas, I caught a vibe (turns out 200 years of heritage will do that to a place) and made a hard stop outside a charming spot. I stumbled in through the packed door and was directed, by means of a grunt, to a tiny table for one shoved up against the bar. I collapsed onto the stool and for the next hour, a gruff older Spanish gentleman silently slid over tapas I didn’t ask for and refilled my glass of vino tinto, saying only, “It’s cold outside. Sit.” I did sit, long enough to stop shaking and breathe calmly; by recognising that what I thought wanted to do didn’t feel right, I found exactly what I actually needed.
My wish for you in 2024 is to be curious and willing enough to let things unfold. Don’t hold yourself to what you think you want right now. Stumble towards enough doors that pique your curiosity til you find a room you want to stay in a while. See where that room takes you, and then do it all again. There’s so much we don’t know. What if we lost our way and found ourselves exactly where we didn’t know we wanted to be?
God speed,
This is a song I love, even more so since I heard Jordan Rakei say in an interview that it’s about himself. Seems a very fitting soundtrack to today’s ruminations.
I cannot remember where I heard this, otherwise I would credit that wise person who has since lived in my head rent-free
Here’s a useful reference for spectrum or spectrum-adjacent folks
🫶