Alternative New Years goals

Make them smaller and bigger for a slow-growing life

Just a quick note before we jump in—I wanted to share my recent article in Vox about navigating chronic illness. A huge shoutout to the wonderful Substackers who spoke to me for this article:

Claire Venus

David Venus

Emily Bazalgette

Kathryn Vercillo

. These folks brought the soul to this piece!

And now…

Art by Stephanie Davidson, written by Rachel Katz

One thing I’ve noticed about New Year’s resolutions is they very often react to the things we didn’t like about last year. We ate too much so now we diet, we were very busy last year so this year will be about slowness, we were too isolated so we will get out more, we didn’t do enough for ourselves last year so this year is about self-care, we didn’t engage with the world enough so we will do community service, we spent too much money so this year is about saving.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with an annual rebalancing of this sort. For me, this cadence happens on a smaller scale many weeks of the year: by Sunday I’m drinking coffee and ordering take-out, and on Monday I recommit to green tea and exercise. If something has gone sideways, why not take the turning of the year as an opportunity to recenter it.

But I think there’s more we can offer ourselves at the beginning of the year, if we are inclined to use this somewhat arbitrary but culturally important turning point as a marker for annual reflection and intention-setting. There is the option to use the turning of the year as a time to remind ourselves or articulate more clearly what vision for our lives we hold most dear. And to consider what seeds we might plant towards this vision in the coming year.

If tending to your own inner workings is part of your vision for the coming year, you might like it here. Subscribe for “consistently sharp and interesting” weekly dispatches.

A slow-growing life

Imagine your life as a grand garden, one where many things are growing, beautiful and mundane, showy and unnoticed, nascent and mature, delicate and tough. New buds are always popping up and everything is evolving; some parts are putting down roots and some parts are shrinking back to fertile soil. I like this metaphor because it captures the ever-changing nature of a life, the fact that there is never a final end state, and the idea that nothing is ever lost, it just returns to the soil of our experience to give life to the next. At the same time, a garden is not random—it can be tended and it can mature, it can start blank and eventually yield strong, immovable trees and sprawling bushes that annually break out into magenta blooms. We can plant things, in other words. Not to say they will necessarily grow and flourish, but they might.

One year is not a lot of time in a garden or a life, so any sort of planting, we would expect, will take much longer than that to grow to its full potential. I have found this to be true in my life, and the things that I am most proud of have grown much like plants in a garden. I remember eight years ago when a friend of mine first mentioned the all-too-outlandish idea that we look for we patch of woods to purchase together, a canvas for creative and nature-oriented projects. As for so many people in my generation, reacting to the painful separateness of the nuclear family, the idea of a shared place with friends was a vision I already held dear. That year, all year long, here and there, we talked about it as if it could happen. That was the critical first step. That was the hopeful planting, and without that I doubt we would have made progress.

It took four years for us to agree that we were serious about it, gather a group, get educated, hammer out the legal documents, look for properties, and make the purchase. Nine of us are now four and half years in to sharing our little patch of forest, a place where nearly all my most transformative experiences and cherished memories of the last few years have taken place. It is a grand experiment, one that is still in its early stages of growth, one that could still catch sudden oak death and topple to earth (like so many of our forest’s oak trees). While I’ve done a little writing about this communal land, I intentionally don’t write about it very often. It is too wonderful, too unbelievable, I wouldn’t want to brag, I wouldn’t want to sully the whole thing with over-exposure to the internet. If I died right now, I told my husband recently, this shared land project is the thing I would be most proud of.

And remember how this started for me: a whole year of just talking about the thing as if it could possibly be real. I doubt many people’s New Year’s resolution for 2024 is, for one year, talk about a visionary idea as if it could happen. Compared to the typical New Years resolution, this act is both much smaller (so it feels unambitious) and much bigger (so it feels scary to say the crazy idea out loud). Here is encouragement—and permission—to consider something like this for 2024, a tiny little planting towards a grand vision, alongside the more immediate goals and intentions that many of us have.

The New Year can be a major comedown, maybe following joy and fun, maybe following a period of loneliness and reflection, maybe following stressful travel, maybe following too much food and drink. Whatever happened, many of us will return to work or school or daily childcare or whatever “normal” is in our lives. We will be like cold engines trying to rev up and get going again, skipping and sputtering, (I know this all too well, my birthday is on January 2nd, the groggiest day of the year). It seems like a little dose of grand vision might be welcome fuel.

A quick exercise, if you’re so inclined

If you like the idea of planting something this year, here are some thoughts on how to get started:

1. Set aside fifteen minutes for writing or talking to a trusted confidant (I find it’s important to either write or speak out loud versus just thinking—the physical acts slow down the brain and reinforce the ideas)

2. For ten minutes, write or talk out loud about your most closely held visions for your life. Get really specific. Imagine the tiny, nourishing details of your imagined reality. Some potential directions to go:

   1. What is that project you always wanted to do?

   2. What would your day or week look like in the life you envision?

   3. What relationships do you yearn for?

   4. What are the things that make you feel hot when you think about them, the things that you are embarrassed or afraid to say because they are so dear to you? When you feel that twinge of fear, that is a good sign—these are the things that matter so much that you are hesitant to bring them into the light, afraid they will shrivel and be destroyed. This is how I felt about my shared land project.

3. For five minutes list or say out loud some options for the very first step, the littlest seed you could plant this year towards your vision. Be unambitious! This is the long game! Big things must start teeny tiny! Some forms this goal could take:

   1. Talk about a crazy idea with someone you trust as if it could actually happen

   2. Look for an opportunity to get to know one person a little better

   3. Write a note to yourself to keep on your desk

   4. Reach out to one person who is further along a path towards a similar vision

   5. Decide to take an idea seriously in your own mind

Here we go, twenty-twenty-four!

—Rachel

✍️ Tell me…

1. What do you think of the concept of a slow-growing life? Does it take some pressure off New Years resolutions?

2. What slow-growing ideas have become a reality? How long did they take?