new year's irresolutions

accepting I may not be a good person, but I can be good enough

I have said to all my friends, family and now my team that my new year’s resolution is to ‘do less’. Less of what, is yet to reveal itself. I forget where I read this, so am unable to credit anyone, but towards the end of last year a caption turned itself up in the dishwasher instagram soup, and, instead of draining away, stuck with me:

When we are stressed, our tendency is to add things. When really what we need to do is take things away.

Perhaps ‘do less’ is really, for me, about just stopping trying to do more. To accept that at this point in life, I’m not going to be:

• volunteering at the food bank,

• exercising more than the five minutes it takes to walk round the corner at lunchtime,

• being the friend, the sister, the daughter I once was, checking in and making effort,

• doing ten burpees in a row,

• seeing friends more than four times a year,

• staying out past nine pm more than once a week,

• replying to whatsapps within 7 days,

• keeping up with the Crown season four,

• working extra hours,

• reading product blogs,

• planning my next career move,

• going on a weekend break to Paris.

All of these are things that, at some level, I have been fighting, and now just need to let go. The spring clean of the flat likely will not happen. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. My amazing book-lined study is still, after a year, full of crap. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.

I may not be a good person, but I can try to be good enough.

Even writing this is a blessed relief. When we came home from Christmas holidays I was seized with a burst of energy: to organise the whole flat, brew tea in my fancy new birthday pot, ferment my own kombucha, cook curries from scratch. It was like ‘nesting’ had finally hit me, a whole year too late. I had a run of a good few days before another round of illness and no childcare took away my fire. As if to bring me down a peg, and alas no kombucha to show.

So I am my old, jaded, pre-new-year self. I’ve found it better to think of what I’ll carry with me into 2023:

• this newsletter, obvs.

• Reading for pleasure. When I had a baby, I let go of any idea of reading for self-improvement. As such, I’ve read more in the last year than ever before. I am sure, more to come on this.

• 5 mins fresh air outside, at least, every day.

• Vitamins. (They’re mostly rubbish, apart from Vitamin D, which is the absolute gold standard in clinical efficacy).

• Waking up with Margaret every day (6am). This has been the only way to reregulate my sleep since, well, getting pregnant.

I’ve also wondered whether we should instead have ‘value of the year’, since a year is such a long time to set actual concrete goals. The value I am thinking most about, which I intend to investigate in 2023, is freedom. Thinking this a boring, passé notion for a long time, I have, in the last year, returned to it and found it more strange, perplexing and vital than ever before.