I’ve written before about how I hate New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, I anchor each rotation around the sun with a theme.
A resolution – lose 10 pounds, make my own coffee – is punishing and black-and-white; if I lose 9.5 pounds, or forget to buy beans, I feel like a failure and the year is ruined.
If my theme, though, is “Health and Home” or whatever, it all ladders up. I’m able to celebrate an incredible 9.5 pound loss and saving money with my morning routine, even if I did it 3 out of 5 days. (Neither of these have happened, by the way.)
I’ve been struggling to think of a theme for this year. Last year was a year of Investment, meaning getting situated in my new city, new job, new habits. I keep thinking that if last year was the year of investment, then shouldn’t this year be the year of banking on those investments? The year of Activation, or Amplification, or any other corporate jargon word that would give me something to grab onto? (All the words reminded me of work, which, gross.)
I was batting these words around (and hating them) when I read an interview with Janelle Monae. She says:
I consider myself to be a “presenturist.” That is a word that I made up: instead of a futurist, I’m a presenturist. If I’m thinking about the future, I’m having anxiety. If I’m thinking about the past, I could be depressed. But when I’m present I’m happy, and I want to savor that.
Thinking Worrying about the future is something I do constantly. I’m always concerned about the emails waiting for me or what the weekend plans are or my next job move or whatever I need to get done that I’m not getting done now. I worry about guns and I worry about my body and I worry about worrying. I spend time and energy thinking about my plans if the house burns down or if I lose my job or if I have to attend this person or that person’s funeral, which are, right now, not real problems but ones I made up.
Even the 2022 idea of investment is all about looking toward – and to a certain extent worrying about? – the future.
So to activate those 2022 Investments, and turn them into something, I’m planning to focus more on the present. As in, what I’m doing right now. How my body feels. What I’m thinking. Enjoying things for what they are – a nice meal, a good workout, a silly decaf draft.
(I’m also just obsessed with Janelle Monae. She knows who she is and follows her own artist heart. It doesn’t shock me that she’s one who lives in the present - and makes up her own word for it. I adore this person. Per the article, “she uses she/her or they/them pronouns but says that her preferred pronoun is ‘freeassmuthafucka.’”)
Normally, this is when I would sit on this draft and think about it more, and then plan to edit it at some point in the near future before I close my eyes and send it out, but in line with my theme, I’m simply not going to worry about it because I’m just writing for the pure enjoyment of it and putting it out into the world and hey, that feels kind of nice.
Welcome the Year of the Present.