I was recently driving Noa to preschool when she asked: “Mama, do we live in Washington?” I replied that yes, we do live in Washington. Momentary pause. “Why do we live in Washington?” This is my third go at three – I should’ve seen it coming. “Well,” I reply-sighed, mentally stockpiling patience for the next 11 rounds, “because that’s where daddy and I choose to live.” The silence lasted only a beat before she confidently replied: “Well I choose ice cream.” Stunned, I simply nodded to both affirm her choice and declare defeat. We rode silently the rest of the way. May we all bring Noa’s energy into 2023.
This year, a slew of competing priorities piled up and deferred my annual reflection ritual. (For newcomers, I do this thing every year where I forgo sending gifts and instead send all of my opinions. Welcome!) Sure, distractions are at an all-time high: the champagne chalet has been discovered, infiltrated, and colonized. I currently have a lapdog in the form of a 6-year-old sprawled across my legs, his body buzzing with frenetic youth. My own pocket vibrates, my wrist illuminates, my coffee mug connects to bluetooth, my headphones abruptly decrescendo, uncannily sensing that I may want to hear something in the background (I don’t), and my laptop protests low power faster than it did in the past, which is particularly relatable.
Yet even beyond discarding distractions, at a time in my life when demand for my attention is at a premium, opportunities abound, and focus is a luxury, I’ve had to get better at saying no to good things. This is hard. And it goes directly against my elder-millennial, people-pleasing, hustle-culture camarilla. But what I’ve learned through well-intentioned multitasking-fails is that focus is not saying yes to the thing most worthy of attention, but instead saying no to the hundred other things, good ideas, and compelling opportunities that exist in resounding chorus. Akin to picking my battles, it’s picking what I protect – shunning unnecessary over-exertion, unshackling myself from the burden of “should,” strategically underperforming, selecting carefully. There’s Noa-level intentionality in saying no; it’s powerful precisely because it preserves the opportunity to say yes.
Now, I recognize that intentionality, discernment, and saying no are clearly not novel ideas this season. They’ve been thoughtfully chewed on and digested by the zeitgeist with a fervor usually reserved only for Timothée Chalamet’s red-carpet looks and our collective desire to suck the gingerbread-spice marrow out of every brittle winter day. Whether we metaphorize trees, mysticize retrograde’s Saturnian energy, or idolize Joan Didion, we intrinsically understand winter’s familiar cycle of death and renewal. Of intentionally letting go of things that don’t serve our goals like a tree drops its leaves – not to ignore or offend the past, but to wholeheartedly embrace the present. To prioritize our needs in the particular season we’re in. To be in a perpetual state of becoming, growth, and evolvement.
So it’s a strong yes to more no. Let’s pour into ourselves! Put up boundaries! Practice JOMO with wild, guilt-free abandon! Because in Joan’s words, “to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – therein lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.” And while I’m a devout disciple, I do sometimes find myself in conflict with my own job title. Community is another nebulous buzzword of our time. On one hand, community has become inextricably linked to our performative, FOMO-laden feeds and FYPs (social media isn’t community, AMA). On the other, community is scientifically proven time and time and time and time and time again to be the investment most worth our time. I recently told my husband that I haven’t stopped being social, it’s just hibernating. But when does hibernation become isolation? We casually juxtapose the barrage of content telling us we’re lonelier than ever with all the rah-rah boss-bitch energy around avoiding humans, banishing phone calls, and cutting off contact #BecauseBoundaries. Staying in as a “radical act of self-care” is as radical today as living, laughing, loving all things vanlife. In this climate, has my own delirious obsession with JOMO become a convenient excuse to avoid the intimacy required for community-building? And is it ironic that I spend my workday earnestly espousing the power of community, only to guiltlessly relish my screen-free evenings alone?
Maybe. But also, the word community needs to have a heart-to-heart with Inigo Montoya. Community is not an audience. You, for example, are not part of my “Boxing Day Community.” (Victims, yes. Especially if you’ve made it this far. But community? No.) Audiences are spoken to, communities speak to one another. Audiences consume, communities contribute. Communities, by their very nature, go against existing social structure; they enrich as they get smaller, more niche, more intimate, more vulnerable, more human. The Latin noun Communitas characterizes a liminal moment – communities form when people move from an area of commonality into an exclusive group because of an experience they share together. Community not only requires boundaries to thrive, it does not exist without them. And through this lens, preserving your yeses by saying no, being discerning in what you choose, what you protect, what you nurture, and what you let go of in the process is as critical for community as Ticketmaster's demise is for Swifties. It’s not a nice-to-have, it’s essential.
Seasons, too, are liminal. And it is precisely in their dissolution of order, their momentary unknown, their fluid, temporal nature that make the communities they root so rare, so precious, so worth protecting.
So at this moment – when the characterization of connection has become performative, when there’s limitless information but with the limited context of 30-second snippets, when yet another technology hype-cycle threatens to “disrupt everything” with artificial approximations of human expression – this moment, right now, is a great time to prioritize our separate peace. To have our private reconciliations. To keep our circles nourished and vibrant, and small if we must. To consciously identify the border between what’s real and what’s perceived, what’s lived experience and what’s simulation. To assign unanswered texts their proper weight, calling ourselves back into the space of being more human than machine: Less scheduled, more present. Less technical, more messy. Because, to paraphrase the coiner of JOMO, being in control of what moves us, what we’re obligated by, and what attachments we have to fleeting experiences is not an authority we should willingly concede to the arbitrary whims of apps on our phone.
My hope for all of us in 2023 is that we radiate the calm peace of satisfaction wherever we are. To have the discernment to prioritize the season we’re in. To trade our fear for joy. And to not miss our lives by chasing the belief that there is some moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now.
All this to say you’re receiving this on the 31st because I chose not to prioritize it until today.
Narrator: And Noa, unflappable, chose ice cream.
Happy 2023
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