In the Before Times, I set New Year’s Resolutions every December and tracked my success against them for some portion of the following year. I tried to revisit this practice last year, but failed early and miserably. Fast forward to December 2022, where I’ve decided that I am finally ready to turn back into a goal-oriented person who can imagine a future beyond the next month. Let’s see how it goes!
Here’s what I have planned for 2023:
1. Do one new thing each week
In the past, I’ve used my Year of New project to do one new thing every day of the year. I am not in that place right now! Instead, let’s try for one new thing per week in 2023, for a total of 52 throughout the year. I have a repository of ideas I haven’t used in years past, but I’m also open to suggestions!
2. Complete 9+1 to qualify for the 2024 NYC Marathon
I haven’t run with any regularity since before the pandemic. Next year, I’d like to change that. I’m finally accepting that I need to start from scratch when it comes to running, i.e., train for a 5K and work my way up from there. It’s a painful prospect after having developed such great stamina in 2018, but the truth is I can barely run half a mile at this point.
3. Launch my newsletter
I’ve been threatening to launch my newsletter since April, but after realizing my former employer would own any of my intellectual property related to their business endeavors, I put it on hold. Synergized, a monthly newsletter on making work less broken, will launch in January 2023.
4. Write one page of a novel each day
I would like to draft another novel, or possibly a book of related stories, but doing that the way I have in the past seems daunting if not impossible. Instead, I’m going to try an incremental approach beginning January 1, with the idea that I’ll finish the year with a complete manuscript.
5. Read my cousin Matt’s books
My aunt and uncle gave me my cousin Matt’s books not long after he passed away unexpectedly in January 2020. In 2023, I plan to read all of them, including Megyn Kelly’s Settle for More. Less surprising authors on Matt’s bookshelf included DMX and Gil Scott-Heron, and I think it’s fair to speculate that this could be the first time those three people have appeared on the same reading list. Matt wanted to learn all perspectives, and I wish I’d known when he was alive that he had Megyn Kelly’s book, as in a former life I met her several times. 🤷🏻♀️
6. Go to Roosevelt Island
I moved to NYC in 2004. I have lived here a total of 16+ years. I have never been to Roosevelt Island. I’m making this a resolution so I have to do it. LMK if you want to go to Panorama Room or Manhattan Park Pool Club.
7. Live as my alter ego
My alter ego, Élodie Clyde, is American but with the energy of the French Olympic logo:
As I wrote in an Instagram post:
I went to an event a few weeks ago where we created alter egos and then went out to a bar in character as them. Since that night I’ve spent so much time thinking about mine. How differently she would navigate relationships, creative practices, finances, her social life. How much less she’d care about what other people think, how she’d never take responsibility for anyone else’s feelings, how much cleaner her apartment would be, how much more comfortable she’d be with other things being messy. The books she’d read, the movies she’d watch, the eyeliner she’d wear. Her insouciance, her last-minute trips abroad, her hours-long dinner parties. A bigger life, but never suffocating.
My word of the year for 2022 was insouciance, but I think I kind of failed at it. Is it possible to have a do-over?
How to Be Creative 