I hate New Year's resolutions. I feel like they set people up for failure, and the statistics say that they are not effective anyway and are usually abandoned within the first two weeks of the year. I think the goals we set ourselves up for both are not realistic for us and only serve as a vehicle of shame.
Yes. I genuinely hate them.
I started my 2023 off with with one question: how can I be more compassionate to myself and to others? I started 2024 off the same way.
2023 was a rough one to start, and while I didn't have any resolutions, I definitely needed change. Because we are always the last ones to know it, looking back, I was definitely starting on a burnout spiral. Over the past couple of weeks, I have definitely done some reflecting on 2023, and overall, I think I did some pretty amazing things for myself. I'm not sure what I wasn't doing to help in my recovery from my surgeries, but I was definitely missing something. 2023 was my year to get that figured out, and figure it out I certainly did. It was a huge year of change and growth for me personally, probably bigger than most of my adult years thus far, and while the year certainly had its ups and downs, I learned more about myself this year than ever. Has it been chaotic and messy and totally beautiful? Yes. Some highlights:
- I started taking Ritalin in May, and I went from needing to carve out time in my schedule to nap every day and sleeping all day every Saturday to being a functional human without having to sleep all the time.
- I finally advocated for myself enough and got myself the mental health assistance that I have needed for my entire adulthood (and likely most of my childhood) for my ADHD.
- I found my favorite gluten-free donut places. There are three. There is one I realized recently that I cannot eat at actually, but still.
- I started eating eggs again and while that particular journey has not been fantastic for me in the digestive realm, I am better in just about every other way possible. Vitamin B3 is a thing, y'all. Definitely not the same in pill form as it is from just eating a damn egg or three or five.
- I got myself a headache neurologist, who finally gave me a concrete plan for the migraines that I've been having for 20 years and it is working. I did not have a migraine for six months this year, which is the longest stretch I have ever had in my entire adulthood.
- I was finally deeply reflective about my personal and professional boundaries and the impact of not honoring them and took immediate steps to rectify the gaps. Are there still some? Absolutely. But I am feeling better, which tells me that I am very much on the right track. As a result, I feel safer than I ever have in my whole life on many fronts.
- I've had many professional accomplishments this year, but by far my biggest was acknowledging that I cannot run my very quickly growing business alone. I not only hired more targeted admin help internally within my business, but I surrounded myself with a network of colleagues and friends who are doing the same things that I'm doing and got the support that I needed from people who get it. I now have a beautiful network of colleagues and friends that I am really proud to call my people. I also feel really proud of the work that I'm doing.
- Probably the biggest thing though, is that if something was happening and I was in a position to advocate, I did it. Around a year ago at this time, I testified in front of a committee of the New Hampshire house about a transgender bill, I fought with Medicaid about reimbursement rates and won, and most importantly, if something was really fucked up, I didn't just let it happen, and I didn't care about the audience. Even if they were in a position of power, if they were doing something that I felt was really wrong, I said something. This was really huge because I spent my life being silenced, and I just realized that I don't want to live that way anymore, so I stopped.
- I believe that I hit peak burnout in early October. I was at a conference, I lost the entire first day to work stuff, and this was when I realized that I had a big problem that needed immediate addressing. And so, that's what I did! I made sure to go to a couple of really cute yarn shops before I left, I left the conference early, I took a week off of work, and during that time, I addressed it immediately. It resulted in such a drastic drop in my workload that I didn't actually know what to do with myself for a little while, but I'm adjusting.
- I also finally realized my own emotional exhaustion on many personal fronts and took concrete steps to address it. I went back to therapy, stopped doing things that were causing said exhaustion, and as a result I feel a lot better.
- We adopted a puppy. Has our life descended into chaos as a result? It sure has. But I would not trade either of these dogs for the world, even if Ruby and her wildness was the reason that I broke my hand two weeks ago.
