me, myself, and hi
on reacquainting with oneself and spinning a 'new year-new me'
1. don’t make it a numbers game
i absolutely love the “let’s get my life back on track” days. they come with regularity. one would think that with enough getting back on track, these days would dwindle. but the mind is a bottomless pit of ambition, and the body is a temple of procrastination. and hey, no greater glory than getting your shit together on new year’s day. this time, i tried something new. instead of trying to juggle everything perfectly every week (and inadvertently failing), what if… i lived my life in seasons too?
sounds more radical in my head that it really is, but i loved this essay. it nudged me to pick a theme, pick an area, go deep, and allow myself to actually feel like i’ve achieved something1, instead of making my to-do list a running numbers game!
Finding something you’re obsessed with and allowing yourself to exist in that obsession and embrace it, is what leads to some of our most creative and fruitful periods. Not always easy to do because balance is often simply necessary, but there’s a case to be made for letting ourselves simply fall into something, and how good that can be. I’m guilty of trying to fit everything I want to do into every week, consistently. Sometimes I just need to take a month where I do more of this, less of that. Maybe I’ll read zero books in January because I’m falling into a new hobby I want to do every second day - that’s fine (that’s good!).
2. who is the real witness?
i understand all the wisdom on living an authentic life and being real to one’s own values. but even then, we are ultimately performing for someone or something, right? to want connection, community, companionship - is to want a witness. and how do you not perform when you’re watched? how do you just…be? maybe the question isn’t how. maybe the question is why. why are you doing anything?
you do it to enjoy. and you don’t need a witness for that enjoyment to be real.
We mould ourselves for others because deep down, we crave love. We want to be seen, adored, chosen. It’s a deeply human instinct. But somewhere along the way, in the act of asking for love from the world, we begin carving off pieces of who we are. We offer up fragments of ourselves, hoping someone will say, “This is enough.”
And then one day, you realise: you’ve become a mosaic of other people’s expectations — but none of it feels right.
3. you don’t even know who you are
dating is hard for a million reasons but one of the things that make it exceptionally hard is that one of the pre-requisites of being able to date ‘well’ is to know yourself and who you are and what you need and how you need it and that’s… tough2. i wonder if we ever really “get there”, or is it meant to be a bayesian journey of learning and error and fucking around and finding out?
We talk so much about finding someone who “gets” us. But how often do we acknowledge that even we don’t fully get ourselves? We are still learning who we are, what we need, how to heal, what triggers us, what comforts us, what patterns we keep repeating, and why. And in the middle of that, we expect another person to show up and navigate all of that chaos without stumbling? That’s not love. That’s fantasy.
4. i can do whatever i want, oh no
i feel like the most privileged person on this planet because these days, i can simply do whatever i want. it’s the dream! it’s what i’ve worked towards! it’s the ultimate unlock! but it suuuucks without the discipline to actually nurture that privilege. i chose to spend new year’s eve-ning by myself. this meant not going out in sub-zero temperatures to watch the fireworks. this meant disappointing a loved one by not giving them company. this meant missing out on the chance to be part of a friend group. this meant stuffing an entire packet of monster munch3 as the countdown to midnight began. this meant creating a bath tub date night for myself and then spending an equal amount of time cleaning up. this meant crying tears of joy and aloneness, unclear how tangled. and this meant being okay with living a life where i can do whatever i want. woe is me. responsibility saddens me.
tangent aside, good piece on the discipline needed to sustain and make the abundance flow :)
5. new year new me
and on that note of reaquainting with myself this new year, here’s a gem from Andrea Gibson:
until next time & new reads!
🌻
~ rufus
looking forward to still feeling like i have not achieved anything so maybe i will just get another tattoo…
unless you ask me my pet peeves of what i definitely don’t like in which case i have a whole list ready, obviously!
if you take one thing away, let it be that monster munch is the most supreme snack / chip / crisp the Brits have, fight me