I loved Cate’s post about deciding on liberations instead of resolutions. If I think there’s a change I should make in my life, I try to just… make it, instead of waiting for an arbitrary time marker. mostly because if I think about it too much, I’ll often talk myself out of it. But liberations? I need some of those, too.
Liberation
- Unsubscribing the third time I delete a newsletter unread.
- Resetting all my slacks and media inputs to Read status whenever I feel like it.
- Getting rid of every item of clothing I’m keeping in case I lose weight again.
- Accept that I am terrible at Approved Gift Giving occasions, and just let myself be spontaneous about gifts.
- Hiring household work rather than trying to teach/enforce it. Not for everything, but maybe that’s just not going to be my legacy as a parent, and that’s ok.
- Helping assholes.*
* I started my new year off with an extensive twitter thread from some jerk in Australia who responded to one of my friends being excited I’ll be giving a workshop by going on and on and on about how open source was life-ruining and stupid, and we were all stupid. And he was wrong, and rude, and abrasive, and I dropped everyone else off the reply list and gently replied that this probably wouldn’t help his job hunt, and had he considered not being a jerk? And then I read Cate’s post, and his follow-up explaining that he hadn’t meant to go after anyone, he just wanted us all to understand that open source was terrible. And then I blocked him, gentle reader. Because I have literally been playing gentle explainer to assholes since I got online at 17, and 24 years is enough. I have done my time. Someone else can help the deliberately abrasive people, or they can stew, but it doesn’t have to be my job.
Growing Edges
These are not exactly resolutions, more like things that I’m looking forward to working toward.
- Write a book. Also, pitch a book (different books)
- Level up my public speaking (this is a post I’m mulling)
- Make some new types of garments: jeans, bras
- Work toward online teaching/coaching/mentoring skills. Give classes? Run webinars? That sort of thing.
- Parent my kids in the ways that work best for them. That’s an every year goal, but the goalposts move like water on a hot griddle.
Top comments (2)
Hey, we share a few of these!
I just went through my closet and pulled out three garbage bags of “I’m saving these for when I lose weight” clothes. I kept one pair of “aspirational” jeans, because I really like them. If I truly do lose a bunch of weight, I’ll reward myself with buying new clothes :)
I’ve also been making peace with slack/email bankruptcy and just marking them as read.
Go us! It's funny what I have been living with because of the emotional work to get rid of it. I think that applies to everything from closest to code bases.