Things I'm Bringing to 2023

Another list

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Following up my list of things I’m leaving in 2022, this is my list of things I’m bringing into 2023. Or, at least the things I came up with off the top of my head. After a lumpy, misshapen 2022, it appears my theme for the coming year is intent and execution. More organization, more fine-tuning the fundamentals, more mindfulness in the activities I’ve let go unmonitored.

Just like my previous list, these items won’t work for everyone. If you get something out of it, great! But everyone’s path is different. This is me humbly offering some ideas and hoping you find something useful.

Well, here they are.

Melatonin

Let’s start out with something I have no choice but to bring with me into the New Year. I am nothing without you, melatonin. For as long as I can remember, no, even longer than that, sleep has been my archenemy. My parents told me that sometimes the only way to put me to sleep as a baby was to put me on top of the dryer and turn it on. The humming and buzzing would lull me to sleep. Other options were to drive me around in the car for a while. This is odd, as I get carsick pretty easily, but whatever. Lore for another time. 

In college, I was so desperate to sleep that I tried just about every kind of sleeping pill, stopping just short of trying one that, as my roommate promised, “Will put you out, but you might not get back up.” He was a bit melodramatic as a person, so who knows if this was true, but it speaks to my plight. I tried multi-hour YouTube videos emitting “theta waves,” I tried hypnosis, I tried ASMR, but sleep eluded me. 

Then came the melatonin gummies. I take one, and my world slowly fades to black. Yes, the nightmares are insane. I had to fight a winged ape to get to an enchanted pond where a ribbon fish was waiting to grant me a wish last night. Yes, the pond was filled with blood, and yes, the ribbon fish turned out to be a trickster god who only wanted my blood for his pond, but you know what? I’m not a victim. I slept for nine hours and I feel great today.

Word Choice 

Hmm, how to articulate this one? 

As someone who works with words, one might imagine I would approach them with care and intention. But I find I’m actually pretty flippant with words, especially with the ones I use to internally describe myself, and sometimes even other people. I’ve always thought it wasn’t a big deal to have this voice in my head that says cruel things about me or makes cruel observations about the people and things I see. Well, I don’t really believe that, is what I’ve always thought, or, I’d never act on that.

And, sure. We all have that voice. It doesn’t make you a bad person. I’ve noticed, though, that I don’t challenge this voice nearly enough, and whether I like it or not, that voice does matter. It’s not this neutral thing narrating my id in the background. It’s a reflection of things I believe, and some of those beliefs need interrogating and reworking. Some of those beliefs, it must be said, actually do seep into some of my decisions and into my work. 

Language begets reality. It’s a lens through which we see and understand the world around us, and, I would argue, the world inside us, our interior. It all conspires to construct our understanding of truth. I want to be a firmer believer in the power of words, even (or especially) the words that swim around in our deepest depths. They have an impact. They are worth bringing to light and inspecting. 

I have a feeling this will affect the words that make it to the surface, too. 

A Pinch More Delusion

I understand my anxiety is both somewhat beyond my control and the result of millions of years of evolution avoiding lions or whatever. But it’s time to be honest with myself. These are not lions, they are emails, and I can’t say that my constant terror over hypothetical calamities has brought me any closer to happiness or success. 

Oddly enough, my comfort zone is a pretty scary place. I worry that if I stop worrying, I’ll stop pushing, stop trying so hard, stop being vigilant for errors or for new opportunities. But you know, the errors tend to happen anyway, and it seems that all I get for my trouble is more silver hairs. To be fair, my silver hairs look great on me. But you know what I mean. 

I tend to base most of my decisions on the notion that I need to be better than I am, because I’m not good enough as is. I put myself down to make sure I push myself harder. It’s a system that, although high in emotional costs, has eked me across many finish lines. 

But I’m starting to think that my anxiety is taking more than it’s offering. I’m already operating from a place of illogic—everything is out to get me, I’m a failure, I’m letting everyone down, I’ll never accomplish what I want—so why not embrace a more pleasant illogic? Why not believe that I can do it, that I’m capable, that things might work out?

Unfortunately, many of those motivational posters hung up around my high school were correct. Attitude really does matter. Sure, I’m afraid of being blindsided, but I don’t think any amount of obsessing will really protect me from that. Better, perhaps, to embrace the idea that I’m pretty great and see if that serves me more. 

If you are a tech billionaire, please disregard all of the above. You should feel worse all the time. 

Body Agnosticism

I actually don’t need to love my body all the time or hate it so much, like, sometimes I just need to think “eh, this raft will float me to wherever I’m going” and think about something else. 

Being Detail-Oriented 

Aside from melatonin, the theme of intent for 2023 continues with “caring about the details.” Please bear with me as I unpack this one, because I think it’s more complicated than it seems.

Caring about details, in fact, has held me back in the past. I’m a “perfectionist,” I suppose, or whatever that even means. “A scared person” also works. But when working on drawings or paintings, for example, I would stress the details way too much at the expense of the overall project. The big picture gets sacrificed at the altar of details more often than you might think.

So what do I mean, then, about wanting to be more detail-oriented?

I mean more that I want to stop cutting corners. When I look at my “perfectionist” tendencies in my work, I actually see that it’s not someone who is so obsessed with details that it just ends up slowing him down. It’s more a person who doesn’t want to do the boring work of laying a strong foundation and wants to get right to the fun stuff, the portion of the writing or the drawing where the thing starts to have a face, where it starts to feel finished and starts looking impressive.

People may not always be able to tell why the thing they’re looking at feels lower quality, be it a painting or a short story, a leather shoe or a film. But on some level, I think discerning viewers know if something is quality or not, if the fundamentals are strong and the craftsmanship is present. Cutting corners shows up one way or another. 

You miss out on the experience you’d gain if you’d really committed, and those experience gaps start multiplying against each other. I’ve phoned it in on past projects just to get the paycheck or to keep things pushing, and maybe that made sense in the past when I was struggling to make ends meet, but I want to be proud of my work. I want to treat every project, big or small, as a reflection of me, and that means really dedicating myself to making a fine product. 

One Less Cup of Coffee a Day. Just One. I’m Begging You

We don’t have to cut out coffee. Don’t panic. Just, please. You will never enjoy your third cup of coffee. You get all jittery and irritable. You paid money for that experience. Like, you exchanged actual funds in your bank to have a bad time. For what? For what?

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Thank you, as always, for reading! I’m really excited to apply many of these ideas to this newsletter in 2023 and make it that much better for all of us. I can’t tell you enough how much your support has meant to me, and I’m positively giddy with the new ideas I have for my Substack. I’m thinking more illustrated essays, more exclusives for paying subscribers, and more engagement with my readers. I want this to be a place where we interact more with each other.

Meanwhile, though, happy holidays! I’ll see you soon.