My New Year’s resolutions are:
To own fewer things at the end of the year than I currently own now. I am not someone who shops for clothes but I still have too many sweaters. I am someone who loves to read but I still have too many books. I’ve found that most of my purchases are driven, to borrow from Girard, by a desire to be. I want to be the person who has read the books I’m buying. I want to be the person who collects obscure works of art. The purchase is a prayer. It rarely comes true.
Watch 50 movies. I find it therapeutic.
Not die. Self explanatory.
Not worry about dying. A little harder. But an epiphany I’ve had (that may only be true for me but which I suspect is true for others) is that the anxious mind-within-the-mind that drives me crazy most days uses my fear of death as it’s ultimate bludgeon. It uses my fear of death to get me to do things I don’t want to do. (Again, this may be specific to my own recently-but-belatedly-diagnosed-with-OCD self, or it may be true in general.) This may sound dramatic, but I wrote it in a journal and find it to be true: In the end, you either overcome your fear of death or let your little rat brain run your life, using that fear to make you, say, get a rabies vaccine you don’t really need.
Find social things built around shared interests, vs prior history. Friends are great, yes, but they’re also easy to waste time with. Especially in New York, it’s just too easy to default to a discussion about who just moved here, who’s leaving, why others cities suck, why this city sucks, etc.
Other things I would like to do but most likely won’t: meditate more, cook more, practice Spanish more, practice Italian more, read more, get abroad at least twice, read the Bible, get into bird-watching, find a writing group, scroll less and less and less, and remind myself daily if not more often: most content in this world is just poison for the mind.
