Category: Productivity

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:

A couple of days ago, I was relistening to an old episode of my podcast that seemed particularly timely, so I decided to repurpose some of the content as a fresh blog post. A lot of us have been in a rut for all or most of the past couple of years, thanks to the pandemic. Lately I’ve been feeling more energized and focused, so I wanted to share some tips for getting back into that mindset for those of you who aren’t quite there yet.

I’ve spent most of the past two years grappling with grief, depression, brain fog, and a total lack of interest in basically anything that used to delight or inspire me. So I’m well aware that there’s no quick fix for getting back to a place where you feel like yourself, and I don’t want anyone to feel bad if nothing in this blog post helps. We’re all on our own schedules, and everyone I know who isn’t devoid of a soul has been struggling with other Big Life Things while trying to survive the weirdest two years of our lives. Alongside the pandemic, I’ve had to contend with the deaths of several people I loved and my father having multiple heart surgeries in 2020 and 2021. Beyond that, I had a separate trauma occur that I wasn’t ready to look directly at for several months after it happened, a major issue with my apartment that lasted a month, and some other fun stuff. So, also, I want to acknowledge that the pandemic is not the only bad thing any of us is dealing with right now.

With that disclaimer, if you’re starting to feel ready to work on something other than survival, here are some things that have worked for me:

It has felt impossible to set or achieve goals the past two years. Only in the past couple of months have I felt remotely like the person I was prepandemic, and I’ve decided to celebrate with something I did every year in the Before Times: setting New Year’s Resolutions. Some of these I’ve adapted from my last list in 2020, as Pandi interfered with my ability to achieve them.