Different year, New Reality, Same old me [3091]
We made it y’all! It’s 2023 and here we are. Four years post-pandemic, six months after Renaissance (still no visuals), and one full week into a new year. 2022 sped by like 7 chicks in a Nissan Altima, and yet the year was filled with so much. A year of change— good and bad, a year of evolution, and a year of self-reflections.
New Year's Eve felt less like a pivotal ending and more like a cathartic intermission. This is why I rung in my new year as relaxed as possible: with a cup of spiked hot chocolate, on my couch watching movies and falling asleep to a sound bath right around midnight.
So far, 2023 has been just that: a cathartic intermission. Still, jam-packed and wild like its predecessor, still not as chaotic as 2019, and still somehow interesting. 2023, so far feels very… propulsive (thank you google). Like the calm right before the storm.
Truth be told, I hate New Year's resolutions. They often feel like a cop-out or a finite goal that oftentimes goes unfulfilled. Usually, resolutions get interrupted by the reality of life and it feels silly to even have existed in the first place. I realized that in the past, I’ve spent my years anticipating an evolution of myself that succeed my current and past realities— a resolution to all my problems that somehow didn’t even align with who I was.
With that realization, I proposed a simple yet heavy declaration that seem true to my current reality and the future to come: to get to know myself without stepping outside of myself. In simple terms: it’s me accepting that the best version of my existence is continuously evolving, ever so fleeting, and periodically nonexistent. Accepting this truth was enough to help me realize that the past and present versions of me coexist simultaneously to help the present and future versions of me survive and continue to evolve into the person I truly am.
I’d also accepted that in the previous year, I lived as a shell of myself. In a sense of less: barely socializing, mentally drained, spiritually lost. I’d concluded that resolutions and sporadic revolutions seemed to be more of a hindrance to my existence— especially as I continued to lose who I was. Realizing how easy it would be to blame the devolutions and transformations on so many things but accepting the truth that maybe it was a necessary reality.
For the good portion of the year, I kept trying to pinpoint when I was happier, more of an active participant in life and actually involved in my hobbies. The constant comparison of then and now made me weary of where I was and where I was headed and where I wanted to be. It made me realize that the new year didn’t mean a new personality or a new gang of hobbies; it simply meant honing in on the person I am and continuing to cultivate her. Accepting that the past me that was “happier” couldn’t possibly survive the version of me today and being okay with that, and truth be told I revel in it.
Rather than being upset, I accept the not-so-linear path of growth and continuously come back to who I am. I think that the pieces of tranquility and turmoil prepared me for the person that I am in this present day and still exist within me. This realization of myself helped me to acknowledge that I exist synchronically in the past and present while consistently preparing for the future.
Below is a poem where I probably was having an existential crisis…
Enjoy,
Jo 🤍
They say time isn’t real. Yet time is infinitely changing and colliding; bending in this way and that.
The time I spend with you is limitless yet the time you spend with me is fleeting. At times when 3am looks very similar to 11:59 in the afternoons when there’s nothing else on my mind but the thought of life colliding with one another.
Time isn’t real because it’s beyond the reality that we see, that we touch. Time is infinite because it’s everywhere and nowhere all at once. Time isn’t real.
Because neither are you
—and me.
