December 29, 2023 by Amy

23…24…

I’ve been so busy working on year-end stuff, including getting Zoe ready for two weeks in South Africa, that I haven’t had time to sit down and reflect on the closing year, nor on what my goals might be for the coming year. 

This is a lie. Let’s start again, shall we?

I have used busy work to avoid thinking hard about what I want to accomplish in 2024. 

There. That cuts through the bullshit nicely.

2023 was a solid year of doing. I set ambitious goals, including consolidating all of my retirement accounts and diving into serious estate planning, both with the much-needed help of our financial planner and a trusted lawyer. The former took three months; the latter, six. I also worked really hard on my mental health this year, thanks to a phenomenal therapist. I’m in a completely different place than I was last year at this time. (Note to friends: tackling The Big Stuff is infinitely easier when you have the help of professionals.)

Those were lofty goals and I’m proud that I got them done. So it feels a little anticlimactic to set a goal like: build a raised-bed garden that is deer-proof. (That and starting to compost are the only goals I’ve set for 2024 thus far, since I worked really hard this year to keep my four potted tomato plants alive all summer long and succeeded, only to harvest all of three actual tomatoes despite many, many blooms. The deer enjoyed the rest.)

So I’ve got gardening and composting on my list, but that’s all. I’ve thought a lot about why I’m struggling so much to come up with anything else, since I banged out my goals for 2023 in about 20 minutes last January. I have a few theories.

This is a point of inflection in my life, and while it’s positive, it’s also scary. We are nearly ready to launch our little chick into the world, and we are confident she will thrive and find her way with grace and humor. Another huge, 18-year goal I can check off my list. (By the way, I hate the phrase “empty nest.” It’s simply wrong. One bird is leaving but there are still two birds here. This is the very opposite of empty, friends. Two-thirds birds is not empty.) Plenty of life left here in this particular nest…and more space for us to spread our wings in ways we haven’t been able to for a while. That’s where the fear lies. It’s the great unknown, it’s the promise of potential that I can take in any direction I want. The looming question: what direction do I want?

Unfettered freedom is scary. 

I’ve heard many writers say, and I’ve experienced it myself, that it’s often easier to write when there are constraints. You have 500 words. You have to write in first person. You have this deadline or that. The subject matter is X. When there are constraints—the more, the better—I can easily work within them and pretty quickly pop out material. Staring at a blank page with no boundaries whatsoever is terrifying. Where does one even start?

I finished a Moleskine this week and grabbed a spiral-bound notebook that I picked up somewhere along the way this past year. I carried the new notebook around for a few days before I could bring myself to write in it. Instead, I was carving little boxes into the empty spaces left on the last few pages of the old notebook, jamming more and more notes in rather than opening the new one. I kept thinking I needed something “good” to start the new notebook. Or that I needed to stretch the old notebook all the way to December 31. Maybe I could start on January 1 with those 2024 goals I am studiously avoiding thinking about. Finally, yesterday, I opened it and wrote “Tasks – 12/28/23” at the top and then started listing what I needed to do. Done. Now I can use the damn thing. Today, I flipped my old notebook open to its first page. It says “August 8, 2022” at the top and then starts a list of tasks. I am, if nothing else, consistent. Why on earth is it so hard to start a fresh notebook? Why do I feel as though something important needs to go on that first page, that first note in the new book? Or that it needs to start on an Important Date. Once I get past that page, I don’t reference it again. Or hardly. This is probably the first time I looked at that first page since August 12, 2022.

This is where I am. Staring down the barrel of the blank page. The first page in a brand new notebook. It’s a few chapters away, granted, since I have to get my kid to South Africa and then to her zero-g flight and to prom and through lacrosse season and spring break and then to May Day and Senior Night and commencement. Dealing with the elation and disappointment of hearing back from the colleges to which she has applied is nestled in there, too, along with moving her into whatever college she chooses. But come August something (or slightly later), it’s a new, blank page. A whole new notebook, actually. With no constraints, no guidelines, no guardrails. I will no longer be able to use my sweet child as an excuse to avoid doing what I need to do. How will I choose to spend my time? It’s exciting and terrifying, all at once.

I had a list of 23 goals for 2023 (thank you, Gretchen Rubin), and I completed 15 of them. Not too shabby. There were the big ones I mentioned above, but also smaller ones like visiting a new library each month, finding jeans that actually fit and are comfortable, making an appointment with a dermatologist for the first time, and cleaning out my closet. But as I review the goals I didn’t complete, I realize that they’re the ones that scare the absolute shit out of me. The ones with open endings that come soaked in vulnerability. The ones that rely solely on me to complete. That depend on my willingness to sit down and open a vein onto the page before tossing it out into the world. Write. Submit. Create one new blog post a month. Unless there’s a writer planner or writer lawyer or writer therapist that can walk me through this step-by-step (without costing me a fortune), it’s on me. (Actually, I do think all those roles exist, but ultimately, the actual work falls to me and only me.)

I did write and submit this year, but not nearly enough. Rejections for everything submitted, which is devastating but only fleetingly so. The writing part is always harder than the rejection part, at least for me. There are a slew of memes out there for writers, joking about how writers have the cleanest homes because we’d rather scrub a toilet than craft a story. We always find something to do that isn’t the writing. With Zoe gaining more and more independence, I find myself running out of things to do. Running out of reasons to avoid sitting in the chair and banging on the keyboard. It’s time to face it, face myself, really.

Or maybe I’ll get lucky and composting will take up all my spare time.

I’ll have to sit and stew on this for a bit, and consider placing constraints on the goal of writing that might help make it easier to tackle. I have realized that I don’t need to figure this out in the next two days. After all, my 2023 goals were set down in January, not by the end of 2022, and they mostly worked. All this is to say that beyond gardening and composting, my 2024 goals are a work in progress.

So here’s to the new year, my friends. May you find your ambitions and yourselves this year. May you manifest the fertilizer you need to be happy, healthy, and creative. May the deer leave your gardens alone, so you can enjoy the bounty of the seeds you sow now. Or sometime in January. Whenever.

#musings#personal essay#writing