I take notes. I write things down. I hoard thoughts, ideas, and inspirations. There are piles of unread books on my desk and shelves. My browser bookmarks are longer than a CVS receipt, my apple reading list is as old and dusty as the Valley of the Kings. I track ideas and things to think and/or write about in scrivener, obsidian, day one, macjournal, notes, freeform, trello, and miro. I scribble notes into muji notebooks of every size. I’ve kept Moleskin in business for a decade.
It all feels like preparation. These are things I’ll get to, one day, but I’m still researching for a me I’ll never be. Similarly, I save money, when I can, for the day when I no longer have to save money. Working toward the days when I won’t have to work. Or can work on what I want to work on. But I suspect, that if that day ever comes, I won’t change a thing. I suspect that putting off doing what I want to do today for an imagined tomorrow is a way of life, not a strategy. It’s who I am. This insight depresses me.
It’s so seductive, to feel like one day I’ll live the way I want, just not right now. New Year’s Resolutions are an exercise in pretending I’ll be the person I’ve always wanted to be, and for a few moments, I actually believe I will. But making resolutions is a delusion, for me, I know this now. Like coming back from a vacation and promising myself I’ll hold on to the magic.
What is that feeling, that sweet, comfortable feeling of being who I want to be that happens for a second when I’m sitting in a boat on a lake under a blue sky or cracking open a book on train to somewhere I’ve never been? Why can’t I reproduce that, carry it with me? I don’t know I can’t, but I know I can’t.
Have you ever had a vacation and then thought, “I could be VERY HAPPY LIVING HERE?” That happens to me on every vacation I’ve been on except to New Mexico. I don’t want to live there. But I actually did move to a vacation place more than once, just up and moved. It doesn’t work, is what I’ve learned.
I used to read blogs, back when there were blogs, of people who moved from New York City to the Hudson Valley. They were a genre. Each one began with incredible enthusiasm, a breathless account of the wonders of leaving all the horrors of city living behind. Then winter came. The updates slowed down. Complaints leeched into the posts. Then they stopped.
Zillow has commercialized the longing. So many nights I’ve spent looking at houses and imaginied a happier me living in them. Near a lake, by the sea, halfway up a mountain. But I know that if I made the leap, once the boxes were unpacked, I’d be up late, back on Zillow, looking at houses somewhere else. I know because my urge is to depart, not to arrive. Getting away, not going toward, is my fantasy.
My New Year’s Resolutions are a catalog of who I’d like to be if I didn’t have to be myself. If I want to make peace, today, with who I am and where I am, then instead of listing what I want to change, I’m making a list of what I want to hold onto. What I like about what I do, or at least, what I no longer expect myself to change.
I resolve to continue wasting time on Substack, writing and reading.
I resolve to stay married to my peach of a wife.
I resolve to keep making soups in my instapot that I can take to work.
I resolve to continue to annoy my friends and family by telling them I love them all the time.
I resolve to keep patting my belly when I see it in the reflection of a window and think to myself, “I’m gonna lose this one day” while knowing full well I won’t.
I resolve to keep praying at the end of the day for myself and all of you, whoever you are.
So here’s to not changing, not going anywhere, making peace with our flawed selves, and finding acceptance within and without. What do you resolve to not change, for better and for worse?
Resolving to write just as sporadically as always to you, my friends,
I remain,
Your Free Life Coach,
Sean Sakamoto
Great insight, Sean. Thank you. You sound just like me. I am comforted
We think so much alike. “Moving toward” is a great visual.