2024
My New Years Resolution
Hi, it’s been a while. Of course, it’s very timely for me to recommit to writing more consistently, what with all of us outlining exorbitant and aspirational resolutions that we’ll likely bin very shortly. Though I swear this time it’s different! Let me explain.
There are endless distractions and reasons I could employ to convince myself that I don’t have time to write. Aside from this, being perceived is scary. It’s not comfortable to be vulnerable and share parts of yourself with people in the first place, let alone in such an enduring fashion on the internet. I was inclined to apologise for how late or cringy this post would be. I think this apology in and of itself is perhaps a product, a curse of our digital age where every footprint is captured, on show, and available for continual and revised scrutiny. I’m liable to overanalyse how I can be viewed, how my words can be interpreted, how I could be wrong, or whether the content I’m creating is perfect or at a high enough standard.
Fortunately, I’ve recently encountered a few pieces of media that speak to this conundrum and were particularly thought-provoking and resonant. The shared themes coalesced into a distinctive message that I could no longer ignore. This rebuke has taken up the mantle of my most prominent New Year’s Resolution for 2024 which is essentially: don’t let life pass you by because you can’t decide to live it.
To elucidate how I got here, let’s examine the second book I read this year; The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. In this novel, we follow the life of Addie LaRue, who was born in France in the late 1600s. Much of the plot is set in the mid-2010s as Addie made a deal with a dark god and is essentially made immortal until the day she surrenders her soul to him. The other caveat is that everyone she encounters forgets her. That is until she meets Henry, a boy who also made a deal with The Darkness. It was Henry’s internal conflict which I found particularly hard-hitting. This character sees himself as “…paralysed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things…” When we meet Henry, he is a college dropout feeling unsatisfied with life and inferior to his high achieving siblings. Of his time in university and the choices which were presented to him, he says:
It was just so . . . permanent. Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?
I felt this in my bones and could completely relate. It also immediately reminded me of two passages of text that Sylvia Plath wrote:
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited. — The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. — The Bell Jar
If you know me well, you know that I am constantly in the throes of an existential crisis. Should I move to London and be a personal assistant? Should I move back to Brisbane to be a career nanny? Should I try this new activity, or go to this new place in Melbourne, or will it be awful and stressful? Should I specialise in an area of psychology? Should I save my money for a house deposit, or blow it on an overseas trip? And around and around in circles I go. This overthinking extends to my online presence and content creation. Should I create a video essay for YouTube, but should I first invest in the proper lighting or audio equipment? Should I share this writing as is, or should I flesh out my thoughts and opinions more? Should I share more posts on my blog, or will that steal time from my evenings or weekend that would be better invested elsewhere? I think and I think and end up doing very little. I’m completely indecisive. According to StudioBinder, this is tragic flaw of the titular character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “To be or not to be. That is the question.” Hamlet constantly wavers and this plunges him into a state of despair, and eventually has dire consequences for the characters around him.
Now, the consequences of my indecision is likely not as deadly as Hamlet’s, but it’s paralysing like Henry’s, and I’m likely surrounded by the rotten fruit that I wasn’t audacious enough to just reach out and pluck. So, that is my resolution: to be decisive and live boldly. Most importantly, to give myself permission to fail and grow in pursuit of this. I might share an idea at one point in time that evolves and changes. The quality of photos I take or drawings I make will improve with practice. But that doesn’t mean that I have to bar myself from creating and sharing until I and everything I do is perfect. That is ridiculous because it will never happen. All I can do with certainty is be a human, and live my life.
While that is my intention, all of our intentions are good when we’re crafting resolutions; that could be all this is. But I’m actually confident because I’ve taken microsteps to start living this way. In 2023, I started tracking my reading and posting reviews more consistently on Goodreads. Since the new year, I have downloaded Letterboxd, tracked and wrote a review for Poor Things, the first movie I watched in 2024. I have also attended a life drawing class and intend on continuing this. If this trend continues, it’s totally plausible that I can do the same on my blog here and on Instagram.
I’m aware that this all sounds like a pretentious and long-winded way of saying do what you want because it’s “for the plot”. But do with it what you will. There’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though I think there is so much to gain by saying yes and freeing ourselves from the constraints of overthinking and indecision.
So, Happy New Year and here’s to feasting on ripe figs in 2024!
