Forget-me-nots and May Day Resolutions

How many of us are in much the same position as this time last year?

I gave it some thought. It's one of the things we all know, but none of us say when others tell us their hopes for the coming year and we pretend to believe them. Do you do that? Pretend? For New Year's, or just in general? And do you do it because you wanna be nice, or because you hope they won't, in turn, judge your failures too harshly either?

Anyway, it's not me asking, it's @tarazkp. A few days ago. Here. And it caught something in me, because as it happens, I've been good this year and asked myself that fairly regularly. What I want and how, what I'm doing to get it and where I'm going wrong.

So a few weeks ago, coming up on year's end, I sat on my sofa one night and started going through my May resolutions. I remember, still, going to a park and sitting by the water and writing them down. If I threw back the pages, I was sure to find the January ones too. The December-lasts. Except I'm not going that far. I need an interim, a bridge, something to make talking to myself a year ago more palatable, because if talking's going too seamlessly, it might mean I'm doing something wrong.

Me last year. Wallowing in some hurt that could've been a smudge on my cheek, except I had to go through it to learn that. It had to feel monumental to realize how necessary it was in the path. But the past year's given me a lot of fresh insight, and not through wallowing, not through sitting isolated in some room thinking about how mean the world has been to me, but through focusing outward. The older I get, the grayer the world becomes. The more I understand that we are all just people. That most of us are trying.

Me last year. A little lonely. Still. But I look back and I'm not lonely in the same way I was December last, and then again not lonely in a way I was in May. I'm lonely in a new way. In a shouldn't have done this or that way. In a now you know a little more way. Hopefully. Only time will tell.

But honestly, I'm quite pleased. I'm looking back on 2024 and see I was in many places brave as me from December last would've wanted me to be. I took accountability in a way I'm not sure I was last Christmas. I was still in a place of looking at what the world had done to me, and how weak that made me.

You can't really resolve much (or come through on many resolutions) if you don't take ownership of your own fuck-ups.

I'm aware that some resolutions are the same as last year's. I'm still broadly looking for my people, but that's also meant looking at the things I was doing wrong. At trying to fit in with people I didn't really care about. At trying to please. In love, at looking (in the words of Louise Gluck) to revenge myself against my father. At keeping people at arm's length. At choosing what is light and transitory for fear of disappointment. All of which I've seen myself do in the past, and to an extent in 2024. But less. Improvement isn't one fell swoop, but rather incremental. It's not doing good today, just better than yesterday.

So I'm monitoring those things and trying to see their value and limit what I consider unproductive behaviors. Sometimes I get immensely frustrated. I did after I was in therapy, because it helped me realize some self-sabotaging attitudes particularly in my love life, and then I thought well then now that's fixed, where's Tom Hardy? I got frustrated, but then I figured wait a minute. You're still only realizing what you were doing wrong and you wanna know how come you didn't do right three years ago? Seems self-evident, don't it?

So I try, also, not to be too hard on myself. My last year's resolutions (apparently) were to be more outgoing, to travel, to finish book three of my series and to learn book marketing. I still suck at marketing, but the others I did pretty well on, even if it wasn't how I would've expected back in December.

My resolutions in May were focused more on the social side (I guess I'd fixed the book at least, and had travel plans). I did well by those, also. Not great. Still don't really think I've found "my people" or "my person". But I'm looking, still, and I know (though it's annoying sometimes) how I went wrong looking for them in, say, June.

I don't think you can honestly set resolutions if you're not first willing to be honest with yourself. I have a December 9th entry in my journal that begins with "what went wrong". What got fucked up this year, and how much of it was my fault? How did my actions stop me getting my supposed resolutions, and how can I circumvent that in the future? It's seldom fun, looking at the ways in which we do wrong, which is mostly why we lie and pretend we believe one another's resolutions. Why we pretend it's doable and easy.

Except, if we all pretend it's oh-so-easy, where's one supposed to turn to when the going suddenly gets hard? Because like an old man discovering little blue pills, it will.

For me, 2024 went wrong in some ways. I betrayed myself in some ways, disappointed my own expectations, was at times cruel or tyrannical to myself and others. But in other ways, I'm closer to what I'd hoped to be, to what I still aspire to be. One thing I can safely say is I'm not in the same place I was last year. That's progress. And progress is everything.

That being said, how was it for you?