#140 - Rabbit rabbit! Goal check in time babeeeey!
or: it's been a weird time plz don't worry if plans haven't panned out
Hello hello, welcome to the end of week 9 and the tip-top start of March (spring equinox is coming there will be PINK TREES in NYC this time next month life feels worth living again because oh right part of the debilitating sadness was partly just the lack of sunlight right right right) we made it!
Leap Day is always a good time to remember just how silly-goofy we are as humans. It's kind of a nonsensical tradition, and honestly I think Leap Day babies are fully within their rights to talk about not having a proper birthday for the rest of their lives.
But also thanks 30 Rock for making a bunch of fake lore about it so now I think of Leap Day Williams trading children's tears for candy (& cigarettes) so, life is what you make it +whatever pop cultural events you assimilate into your belief system/personality.
I've been seeing a lot of people online lament that they haven't gotten the best start to their year, declaring a "redo/restart" for March 1st. And honestly, I think that's really fucking great. New Years is arbitrary, goal setting can/should happen whenever the time is best.
Claire B
Am I still on my little Goals Are Great kick? Eeeeeyah?
I mean yes, with caveats but also way fewer caveats than I had first assumed because I was judging myself without actually taking a second to look back and check what I had actually gotten done and because my default beliefs in myself are still largely negative (we're working on it) I just assumed that I had fallen short.
Great news, I haven't!
One of my goals is 52 newsletters this year, and this is my 10th of 2024. I'm not failing at that goal it turns out. I am a week ahead of schedule, even!
Now, did the assumption probably stem from the chilling lack of desire I've had to commit my thoughts to page recently? Chyeah, probably. But if I hadn't stopped and counted (shoutout to past me for going through and numbering all of these last year, future me has to go through and re-add featured images to each one because that part of the substack didn't carry over and oooh I'm clenching my jaw again uh-oh) I might have just taken it as fact that I was "behind" and then if my old thought patterns were still lingering around, I would have used that to berate myself with for like months and it would have become a source of shame and I would have approached it with trepidation and like fear because oh no what if not being able to meet an arbitrary standard I set for myself actually represents the Real Reason I'm Hard To Love???
(It doesn't!!!!)
(Phew.)
Anyway, in a world obsessed with accomplishing things, culture is kind of shit when it comes to celebrating those wins. The point of getting things done seems to be clearing off the to-do list just so more can get tacked onto the end right away.
So! We're 2/3rds of the way through Q1 of this year.
Get a piece of paper or open up a word doc, set a timer for one minute and write about one thing you're really happy/proud/thrilled that you've done this year. It doesn't have to be a finished project, it doesn't have to be a Big Thing, it doesn't have to be generated by you it can totally just be like happy you went and did a thing, happy you finally threw out that old duvet, happy you didn't give into negative thoughts that one time, just one thing that's happened in 2024 that you're happy you did!
One thing I'm proud about that happened in 2024 is...
Okay, ready? Go!
Great hi, welcome back! I'm so proud of you for doing that thing!! The world has been abjectly horrifying lately and you're still here babe I'm SO proud of you for getting through it and continuing to push forward and now you have an artifact, a written little record, all about something you're proud of yourself for and like, isn't that kind of a miracle how much difference 60 seconds can make?
I'm trying to move past what I call Hack Culture – the urge to get everything done as quickly as possible with the minimum effort required.
Honestly, in terms of like Doing Things, I mostly do them so I can talk about them.
Yes, seeing the comedy show is fun, but I go for the part afterwards where I'm outside the venue smoking a spliff with my best friend, recalling all of our favorite jokes we're desperately trying to keep from falling out of our heads.
Sure I like going to things, but I love discussing my opinions about them.
Life's about the debrief babeeey!
You know, that thing that everyone assumes we can rush right past because hey, the thing got done didn't it?
Sure but how did we feel while doing it? Was there an inherent sense of "this doesn't matter anyway" (which often sounds like "who cares, no one is going to actually read this far" for me) that overtook your enjoyment and therefore rendered the Doing only important by arbitrary metrics that leave you personally unsatisfied? Was there anything to take with you – time management upskill, a feeling of "oh I really am capable of this", a system you developed that you want to write down so you remember how to approach similar tasks in the future?
I mean, part of it is that daily life feels rote and every complaint about american culture feels like its been documented a million times over online and american work culture basically relies on paranoia as it's primary combustion engine which renders all work tasks into surveillance state check-ins and you know what I may have drifted lanes a little bit here but I DO think it's important to constantly question the work norms that make us feel like we're not trusted by the people who employ us OKAY DONE!
But! Checking in with your goals is great because things change and my emphasis on zooming out when goal making is about digging into the why behind the goal so that the goal itself can be achieved in different ways.
The top level goal that daring myself to write 52 essays a year serves is making sure I'm writing. If I stopped this newsletter halfway through the year but kept writing the same amount, the purpose behind the goal would be achieved.
Goals should be flexible, because life is rarely constant. What we thought might happen in January may have come to fruition, but we may have also had to surrender to the idea that we actually have very little control and free will is debatable too, so, goals may change and that's GREAT!
If you have a list of goals, I'm gonna once again encourage you to pause here, go look at them, and be honest with yourself about if you still find them compelling, if any of them have hit an unexpected snag you need to dedicate some time to understanding, and if you're still committed.
Still relevant? Awesome! Look at you go!!
A bunch of them no longer excite you? Buh-bye those goals! Thanks for playing, your services are no longer needed at this time!
We get to choose how we spend our lives and those choices CAN be radically different from the preceding ones woohoooooo!!
So, anyway, hey hi hello! Welcome to March, a full month full of equinoxes and changing of seasons and the CLOCKS ARE A CHANGING which for me means the return of morning walks babeeeeey!
I hope this month is kind to us all, I hope we see the fruition of efforts towards establishing lasting peace, and I hope that collectively we can heal the damage of witnessing the depths of cruelty from our supposed leaders.
(I'm heartened by the movement in Michigan who organized within 3 weeks and overshot their goal of 10,000 undecided votes and got over 100,000. In three weeks. By talking to their neighbors and strategizing in groups. Communication in groups matters more than ever I'm so grateful to have a job where I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help others get better at it!)
Sending you all so so SO much love (and a few more journal prompts because I'm just actually fully leaning into the whole Being Annoying About Making People Attempt To Write Down Their Feelings For Themselves thing that I've (poorly) resisted in the past).
Journal prompts:
- How are you? No really, how are you?
- What's something that's been the metaphorical pebble in your shoe lately?
- Is there anyone you could ask for help with getting it out of there?
- A fundamental truth I wish more people knew is...
Okay that's it g'byeeee ✌️🩵 & ☘️