To all the chronic resolvers out there

It's fine. Take another shot.

Happy New Year! The holidays are actually extended for our family. We have relatives from Canada who are vacationing here and so we have various gatherings that will run until the third week of January. On New Year’s Day, we visited my uncle’s new farm in Cavite to enjoy the cool, country air of the highlands. Prince was with us and he had a grand time running across the field, sniffing vegetation he has never encountered before, and, even without a leash, gently walking alongside us as we toured the property. He truly is the sweetest dog, extremely well-behaved, and happy to soak in all the attention from strangers and new acquaintances. I couldn’t have been a prouder dad/brother.

Cavite, January 2023

One of my other uncles harvested fruits and veggies for us—that’s him holding up the pineapple. We brought home eggplants, okras, cherry tomatoes, and papaya, which we had three days ago: the sweetness was muted, but it had the notes and aroma of cocoa, which was very interesting in a good way. As I am writing this, I’m wishing I did take photos so would I have more to show here.

As family reunions go, I’ve already committed a major faux pas: interchanging the names of my cousin’s girlfriend and another cousin’s new dog. In my defense, it was my first time to meet both of them and their names sounded slightly alike (or maybe not?): Lily, the beautiful Canadian girlfriend, and Lucy, the pretty golden retriever. I asked something like, “When did you get Lily?” 🤦🏻‍♂️ (For the record, I am against all forms of human trafficking.) Not the first impression I would have wanted to make and thankfully, both parties were out of earshot, though something tells me Lucy wouldn’t have minded my blunder.

After months of indecision, I’ve deactivated my Twitter, at least temporarily. (Twitter gives a 30-day allowance before it permanently deletes your record.) During the last two weeks, I’ve switched it to private and deleted followers—the idea was to keep it running only for friends and acquaintances—but I found myself scrolling endlessly, getting wrapped up in the news cycle, and composing hot takes in my head. And so I decided to quit cold turkey on January 1. This was also a few days after that epic exchange between activist Greta Thunberg and misogynist Andrew Tate. As much as it was glorious to witness such a poetic comeuppance, I would have appreciated living my life without ever knowing who he is. (On yet another indictment of Twitter, Elon Musk reinstated Tate’s account after he had been banned from most social media platforms since 2017. I’ve had enough already.)

I was big on New Year’s resolutions, but since the pandemic, I’ve cut myself some slack and decided to just trudge along as I please and make spontaneous character adjustments as I deem necessary. But here’s a beautiful article I read in The New York Times, titled One Resolution You Might Just Keep (gift link):

If resolution makers wanted a patron saint, they could do worse than Samuel Johnson (1709 to 1784), a lifelong resolver and by his own admission a lifelong failure at keeping his resolutions. Reading his diaries, we may sigh in recognition as time after time — at the New Year, at Easter and on his birthday — Johnson renews his intentions to rise early, to be more studious, to be more moderate in his intake of food and drink, and laments his neglect of those same intentions in the year past.

‘I have now spent 55 years in resolving,’ he wrote on his birthday in 1764, ‘having from the earliest time almost that I can remember been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing; the need of doing therefore is pressing, since the time of doing is short.’

For all of Johnson’s failed attempts, he kept being successful in one: the resolution to continue resolving.

A variously worded phrase that often recurs in (his) prayers… is “God… who hast permitted me to begin another year.” Religious or not, most of us know that heady sense of reprieve and possibility implicit in the mention of “another year.” I’ve made it this far. I’m not dead yet... Johnson seems never to have lost sight of that chance. He saw it all around him, sleeping in the ashes, collapsed in the mire, and he seized it with compassion. How much happier this New Year would be if we resolved to do the same.

That phrase, “God… who hast permitted me to begin another year,” hit differently for me because I read this article around the time I learned of the deaths of famous personalities during the last days of 2022. How truly special that we are alive considering that the alternative has an equal chance of being true at any given time.

My bullet journal, December 2022

And so I resolve to continue resolving. I will be consistent with my sleeping habits and exercise. Curtail my social media use. Twitter was not on my bingo card at the start of last year, but deleting it this time around was a good start. Actually, I ought to curtail my phone use in general. Create stuff—this newsletter is helping me with that. I plan to renew my hobbies in watercolor and photography. Explore my creativity. I’ve reset The Artist’s Way after hitting pause on it last year—it felt like therapy and I experienced grief, but I’m ready to face it again. Say yes to social invites. I always said no to a fault, which might have impaired some of my relationships. Read one book a month. I only got eight last year.

The overall idea is to reclaim my attention span, avoid the short-term, dopamine-driven stimuli I get from my gadgets and the internet, and slow down and enjoy the present moment. And should I find myself lucky enough to be alive at the end of 2023 yet falling short of these resolutions, may I treat myself with kindness and continue to strive better in the following year.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson